The science of the new / Vittorio Loreto, Vito D.P. Servedio, Francesca Tria.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Loreto, Vittorio, author.

Servedio, Vito D. P., author.

Tria, Francesca, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technological innovations--History.

Technological innovations.

Technology--History.

Technology.

Civilization--History.

Civilization.

Science--History.

Science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations (some color)

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2026]

Summary:

Much like our everyday moments of novelty, innovations often catalyse subsequent breakthroughs, creating a chain of progress that can be traced across history. 'The Science of the New' explores the dynamics of novelty and innovation. It originates from the observation that these two interrelated phenomena that shape human experience, from the ordinary encounters we have in daily life to the ground-breaking advancements in science, technology, and society, are two faces of the same medal. In other words, novelties and innovation can be described by the same underlying processes and their emergence obeys the same general statistical laws. The construction of a solid mathematical framework to treat the phenomenologies related to the experience of the new represents a formidable challenge and a necessary one if we want to understand the world around us and be able to make predictions in an ever-changing environment and society.

Contents:

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication page

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Contents

PART I. Quantifying what is new

1 Entropy, complexity and surprise

1.1 Entropy in thermodynamics

1.2 Boltzmann's interpretation of entropy

1.3 Entropy, communication and information

1.4 Information and surprise

1.5 Algorithmic Complexity Theory

1.6 Measuring entropy, complexity and surprise

1.7 Gamblers

1.8 Information is physical

2 The statistics of the new

2.1 The species sampling problem

2.2 Frequency-rank relations: the Estoup-Zipf's law.

2.3 The innovation rate: the Herdan-Heaps' law

2.4 Fluctuations in the occurrence of the new: the Taylor's law

2.5 Intrinsic vs. real time

2.6 Zipf's vs. Heaps' laws

2.7 Empirical analysis of Zipf's, Heaps' and Taylor's laws

3 Temporal patterns of innovations: triggering effects, trends and correlations phenomena

3.1 Detection of clustered events

3.2 Detection of triggering events

3.3 Waves of novelties

4 Mechanisms of innovation from biological to cultural evolution

4.1 Innovation in biological evolution

4.2 From biological to cultural evolution

4.3 Exaptation.

4.4 Serendipity

4.5 Tinkering and the Adjacent Possible

PART II. Modelling the dynamics of novelties

5 Yule-Simon-like models

5.1 Simon's model

5.2 Simon's model with time-dependent innovation rate

5.3 General conclusions

6 Plya's urns and Laplace's rule of succession

6.1 Two-colour Plya's urn scheme

6.2 Exchangeable sequences and the de Finetti representation theorem

6.3 A Bayesian perspective

6.4 Multi-colour Plya's urn scheme

6.5 General conclusions

7 Early urn schemes with innovation: Hoppe's model and the Dirichlet process

7.1 Ewens' sampling problem.

7.2 Hoppe's model

7.3 Chinese restaurant process, cycles and Hoppe's model

7.4 Heaps' and Zipf's laws in Hoppe's model

7.5 Hoppe's model and the Kingman's coalescent

7.6 Partition structures and the Kingman representation theorem

7.7 A Bayesian perspective: the Dirichlet process

7.8 General conclusions

8 Urn schemes with expansion into the adjacent possible

8.1 The Urn Model with Triggering

8.2 Urn Model with Triggering with annealed and quenched random parameters

8.3 Urn Model with Semantic Triggering (UMST)

8.4 Graph counterpart of the Urn Model with Triggering.

8.5 Beyond the pure rich-get-richer effect: waves of novelties

8.6 The Urn Model with Triggering and the two parameters Poisson-Dirichlet process

8.7 General conclusions

PART III. Empirical observations

9 Human and social systems

9.1 Language

9.2 Human interactions

9.3 Spatial exploration

9.4 Scientific cooperation

9.5 Conclusions

10 Socio-technological systems

10.1 Wikipedia: the online collaborative encyclopaedia

10.2 GitHub: a software collaboration platform

10.3 Del.icio.us: a social bookmarking web service

10.4 Last.fm: an online music website.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (Oxford Academic, viewed on July 30, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Loreto, Vittorio. Science of the new.

ISBN:

9780191834615

0191834610

9780192511218

0192511211

OCLC:

1573643348

Publisher Number:

CIPO000355236

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license