Complexity & Elegance
by Jason GodeskyJoseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies offers the most widely-accepted view of why civilizations collapse in archaeological discussion; already summarized in greater detail elsewhere, for now, it is sufficient to recall that Tainter’s primary argument rests on the idea that social complexity is subject to diminishing returns, beyond which further investments in complexity become less economical, leading to collapse. This is a powerful explanatory framework, and while social complexity is a well-defined and even quantifiable criteria, “complexity,” as a whole, is often muddled and weighed down by more colloquial understandings. If we are to compare social complexity to other forms of complexity, then we must investigate further the broader definition of complexity in general, and its counter-balance, elegance.
The definition Tainter used for social complexity offers one key starting point for our discussion. It is the most generally accepted definition of social complexity in anthropology.
Complexity is generally understood to refer to such things as the size of a society, the number and distinctiveness of its parts, the variety of specialized social roles that it incorporates, the number of distinct social personalities present, and the variety of mechanisms for organizing these into a coherent, functioning whole. (McGuire, 1983)
In biology, the definition of “complexity” is subject to greater debate.
However, biological complexity has been widely accepted to be a function of the range of subcellular structures (prokaryotes versus eukaryotes), increasing numbers of cell types, organ structures, the functional repertoire of the organism, neural and immune function, and the intricate developmental processes necessary for the generation of these characteristics. The recent advent of the genomic era, however, has shifted discussions of complexity to genomic composition. Perhaps the most valuable genomic definition of biological complexity stems from an information theoretic approach. This definition suggests that an organism’s complexity is a reflection of the physical complexity of its genome, i.e. the amount of information a sequence stores about its environment . (Taft & Mattick)
Complexity has become a major issue in many fields, from computer science, to biology, to anthropology, and others; yet, a single definition for complexity that cuts across these varied uses remains elusive. In his consideration of John Horgan’s general dismissal of the term, D. C. Mikulecky, a Professor of Physiology at Medical College of Virginia Commonwealth University noticed that the key to understanding complexity lay in the failure of the Cartesian “machine” to adequately explain the world. “Ironically, not only do we not have a good definition of complexity, but we also lack one for a machine. The importance of this metaphor is in the intuitive concept of machine that almost everyone shares. A machine is built up from distinct parts and can be reduced to those parts without losing its machine-like character.” Complexity defies this, because in a complex system, losing one of the parts breaks the system. Complex systems are more than the sum of their parts. Thus, Mikulecky offers this general definition:
Complexity is the property of a real world system that is manifest in the inability of any one formalism being adequate to capture all its properties. It requires that we find distinctly different ways of interacting with systems. Distinctly different in the sense that when we make successful models, the formal systems needed to describe each distinct aspect are NOT derivable from each other.1
This harkens back to the etymological roots of “complexity,” in the Latin complexus, meaning “entwined” or “twisted together.”
We may conclude that complexity increases when the variety (distinction), and dependency (connection) of parts or aspects increase, and this in several dimensions. These include at least the ordinary 3 dimensions of spatial, geometrical structure, the dimension of spatial scale, the dimension of time or dynamics, and the dimension of temporal or dynamical scale. In order to show that complexity has increased overall, it suffices to show, that—all other things being equal—variety and/or connection have increased in at least one dimension. (Heylighen, 1996)
If we take this definition and apply it back to the definition of social complexity offered by McGuire, and generally accepted in anthropology, we can see the unspoken tenet that bridges the gap. Namely, that cultures are reflexive, nearly organic systems, where every cultural element interacts with and helps shape all others. Changes in religion will have effects on art, architecture and tool making, and changes in how food is gathered will change social structures, locality and religion. So anthropologists already understand that all cultural elements are fundamentally interrelated, and have neglected that element from their discussion of social complexity, because for them, it is redundant.
How does this change our understanding of social complexity and biological complexity, and diminishing returns? It’s worth noting that biological complexity exhibits much of the same behavior towards complexity that we see in human societies. All systems have some degree of complexity, so like heat, we can speak of one thing as “more complex” or “less complex” than something else, but these are comparative measures.
Many have pointed to biological evolution as a constant escalation of complexity: that evolution somehow innately favors greater complexity. Stephen Jay Gould (1997) has rebutted this perspective by pointing out that throughout history, the overwhelming majority of life on earth has been minimally complex. There’s a certain amount of complexity chemicals need to be truly alive, and overwhelmingly, most living things by numbers and type hug this boundary. Rather, Gould says that evolution maximizes diversity, not complexity, thus creating our anthropocentric perspective by way of the “Drunkard’s Walk.” If a drunk stumbles out of the bar, going this way and that down a side walk with a wall on his left, and a gutter on his right, then he will end up in the gutter on the right every time. The reason is not because his movements arent’ random, or that he favors the right, but because there’s nowhere else to go on the left because of the wall. Likewise, Gould discusses a “left wall” of biological complexity, the minimum complexity necessary for a chemical reaction to still be alive. With nowhere else to go in that direction, increasing diversity means that evolution will lead to more complex traits.
Gould’s “Left Wall” of biological complexity.
This idea has not gone completely uncriticized, of course.
There is a kind of “just-so” quality to this notion (to borrow a metaphor from Gould). It implies that systematic size/complexity increases in nature could occur without being “tested” and winnowed by natural selection. On the contrary, any such changes always entail bioeconomic “costs” (energy, for instance) that have to be offset by at least equivalent “benefits.” (There are no free lunches in nature.) (Corning, 2001)
This is an important point, and one that definitely needs to be added to Gould’s metaphor to make it fully work, because while there is a complexity minimum in biology, there is also an effective maximum, measured not in any absolute terms, but rather, in efficiency and diminishing returns. Let’s take one of the most complex systems evolution has yet developed, the Homo sapiens brain.
A brain, energy-wise, is an enormously costly organ. That is, pound for pound, it takes far more energy to keep it running than any other organ. It accounts for about 3 percent of our body’s mass, yet close to 20 percent of our energy needs. The quantum leap in brain size brought with it a stiff increase in the individual’s need for calories. Thus, if that bigger brain did not bring with it at least a proportional leap in our ability to feed it, there would be no net gain, and it would not confer fitness, would not survive evolution’s merciless test. (Manning, 2004)
The marginal return on the human brain is very slim: for all the power it gives us, it also requires an enormous input of energy. It just barely breaks even, and that only because we, as nomadic, social omnivores, were able to put it to use in a tribal context to share risk, wealth, hunger and plenty, to the benefit of all. The egalitarian social networks that our big brains allowed us to form were all that made its enormous energy costs worthwhile. So we can see already that anything much more complex would be much harder to feed, in terms of the added energy cost. So besides the left wall of minimal complexity, biology also has an ill-defined right gutter, where the marginal returns on further complexity become too small, and such varieties die out.
The biological process of succession essentially “fills in” the maximal ecological complexity a particular place can sustain, based on geological, climatological and similar constraints. Early stages begin with less complex systems, such as grasses, that move in quickly after a catastrophe, fix the soil in place, and prepare the way for slightly more complex brush and small trees. These give way to new growth forests with somewhat more complexity, and finally reach maximal complexity in old growth forests. Of course, local conditions may have different energy caps. Climate (rainfall, average temperature, and so forth), geology (soil quality, minerals, and so forth), geography (latitude and the angle of the sun, rivers, mountains, and so forth) all set constraints on how much energy is available to the local ecology, and by extension, how far along the process of succession can go. But even under “ideal” conditions for maximal complexity, ecologies reach a maximal level of complexity and then stop. Beyond that, the complexity becomes too costly, and the marginal return too low. Even where energy abounds, ecologies do not move beyond a level of complexity very far beyond an old growth forest. Even without civilization’s influence, only 60% of the earth’s land area is covered with forest, and only a portion of that is old growth at any given time.
Human societies, like any other kind of animal society, build on this ecological complexity, and depend on it for sustenance. Like biological communities and organisms, human societies likewise have a “left wall” of minimum complexity. The Ik of Uganda, or the South Fore of Papua New Guinea, for instance, hug this wall tightly (interestingly, both show signs of having once had much more complexity in their cultures, but to have then collapsed to their current levels). Most of the world’s cultures fall into a range of complexity slightly higher than this, ranging from hunter-gatherer bands to horticultural tribes. Civilizations may account for the most people, but they are a distinct minority of cultures. As we have already seen, and as Tainter (1988) discussed in much greater detail, civilizations are likewise subject to diminishing returns.
What does this mean? Does it mean that complexity is “bad”? Obviously not; complexity is present to one degree or another in every society, in every ecology, and in every organism. Rather, it implies that complexity is an investment, and subject to diminishing returns, whether we are talking about societies, organisms or ecologies. Complexity can provide extra energy, but it also entails an energy cost. Lower levels of complexity always provide the highest marginal costs; higher levels always entail the lowest marginal costs. What matters, then, is not trying to “eliminate” complexity, but rather, adopting a more nuanced view of it—neither as an evil to be stomped out, nor as a good to be pursued. Rather, it must be approached as an investment: sometimes wise, and just as often, not.
Does this mean we are fundamentally limited in our capacities, that we must bound our dreams? To some extent or another, our Icarian enterprise could do with a bit of wing-clipping, but this would likewise be an incorrect conclusion to draw from complexity’s limitations, because we also have available to us the opposite of complexity: elegance.
Gregory Chaitin proposed a formal definition in computer science, stating that the most elegant program in a particular language was the shortest one that could achieve the same result. Another mathematician, Edsger Dijkstra, said, “The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics.” The anthropologist Clifford Geertz related these ideas as well: “The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.”
Elegance achieves the same end with fewer parts, making it the opposite of complexity in approach, but not in nature. To achieve that result, elegant solutions emphasize the non-mechanistic nature of systems. Because elegance works with systems as they are, there is no steady escalation that it drives towards, as complexity does. That makes elegance a sustainable trajectory for a society. While ever more complex solutions eventually become too costly to pursue, ever more elegant solutions will always be available.
Elegance is a solution to the problems of hierarchy. Because elegance is, by this definition, contained, it will foster localized, self-sufficient, and independent societies. Elegance is the feedstock of rhizome. And elegance is a concept that, if we set it as our goal, can steer the vast potential of human innovation to a positive, sustainable end that is compatible with human ontogeny. (Vail, 2006)
Greer’s (2007) definitions for “sustainable technology” likewise fit the criteria of elegance: durability, independence, replicability, transparency all follow from elegant design. As computer programmers are painfully aware, greater complexity in a piece of software brings with it exponential increases in its fragility. Simpler programs are the most robust, because there are fewer places where something can go wrong. With each new class, function, or even line of code, a program introduces not only the potential of a mistake in itself, but of unexpected problems in how it interacts with other parts of the program. Those potential problems points of interaction increase exponentially as the number of parts increases. Elegance is a programmer’s highest virtue, because a simple program that can achieve the same ends does so with far greater reliability and robustness. The 10 million new lines of code in Windows Vista may awe the uninitiated, but for programmers, they are not a signal of vast improvements, but a red flag of new bugs, pains and headaches.
An example of elegance: The use of primitive windmills in Michael Green’s “Afterculture.”
Some have suggested that our understanding of complexity in human cultures is probelmatized by the greater complexity in ecological systems. Of course, the fact that human societies already begin on top of those ecologies must certainly not be forgotten. But the most diverse ecology on earth, the Amazon, is made up of millions of species; modern, Western civilization encompasses millions of cultural elements. What makes ecology seem to “work” with such seeming effortlessness is not the complexity of the solutions evolution has provided, but their elegance. Ecologies are complex, and as we’ve already seen, they likewise suffer from diminishing marginal returns on that complexity. That is why evolution, not sharing our biases, began exploring a new avenue: elegance. This is likewise why indigenous cultures and modern permaculturalists alike look to ecological systems as the pre-eminent teachers of elegant design.
In the Northwest, salmon swim at the center of the stream ecosystem, linking the land with the sea. Born and reared in the clear, cold waters of our rivers and streams, most juvenile salmon species feed on aquatic insects - mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies, and others. These insects feed upon the detritus of decaying leaves, wood, and other stream life. The decayed carcasses of adult salmon returned from the ocean to spawn and die are transformed into nutrients for the stream and food for their own offspring. It is a web of ecological elegance, and is the foundation of a great Northwest mythology centuries old.2
An example of elegance: The use of hangliders in Michael Green’s “Afterculture.”
In his imagination of a post-civilized North America, Michael Green’s “Afterculture” consistently invokes the possibilities of elegant technology, rather than complex technology. The windmills and hangliders that appear in Green’s paintings are not complex: a few stout branches, some properly tanned leather, and some good cordage to put them together properly are all either of them require. Yet their ability to use something as simple as the passing wind and the laws of aerodynamics allow them to achieve remarkable feats with very little in the way of complexity. These are both excellent examples of elegance.
The problem with complexity does not lie with complexity, but in our relationship with it. We have idolized complexity as an absolute good. Our civilization is systemically driven to pursue greater complexity no matter the cost, even at the risk of collapse and ensuing “gigadeath.” Complexity to one degree or another is necessary, but it is not simply “good.” It is an investment, and taken too far, it can become a bulky overhead—one that can come at far too high a cost.
The finer things in life can generally be divided into two categories: material and experiential. Despite the relentless psychological barrage of advertising, most of us can readily admit that it is the experiential that is truly rewarding and fulfilling. Many even recognize their own predilection to fulfill their desire for the experiential by compensating with an excess of the material. Commercialism tells us that the experiential–that which requires time–is too costly, out of our reach. Our time, we are led to believe, must be sacrificed to meet the demands of the economy. But time is free for all of us. It is the great equalizer, something to which we all have equally random access. But in the modern economy, where average individuals cannot directly provide for themselves, they are duped into trading time for the basic necessities of life–necessities that are directly available to the poorest of the Earth. As this economic hierarchy has intensified over time, we continue to be duped into trading our time for material possessions–far beyond those required to survive. The memes of our economic culture have convinced us that the material is a fine substitute for the experiential. A nagging doubt, dissatisfaction with our own suburbanization, some unknown, unfulfilled yearning tells us that, despire the overtures of mass-media, even the materially rich among us still long for the experiential. (Vail, 2004a)
Vail also offers us some points on how we can begin to repair our dysfunctional relationship with complexity and elegance:
- Elegant simplicity: some things work better, are more efficient when they are simple. Simple may not serve the needs of hierarchy, but it often does serve the needs of the individual, family or community. We need to develop and explore these instances when simple is more efficient than complex. I won’t go into examples here, but this is a body of knowledge that must be developed, remembered, etc.
- Conspicuous simplicity: replace the cultural ethos of “conspicuous consumption” with “conpicuous simplicity”. If it is desireable to have a flashy and showy level of simplicity, to have as high a standard of living as possible in a “simpler” manner than your neighbor, then we may be able to make the transition from hierarchy and complexity to rhizome and simplicity. It CAN happen–take a look at advertising all around you and look at how attractive the “simplicity” is, how hard the advertisers have to work to make that rolex or ferrari stick out of the beautiful nature scene, how difficult it is to brand your hotel when the real attraction is a quaint seaside locale. How the real star of that diamond commercial is two people in love–or at least the nice meal they’re sharing. (Vail, 2004b)
A dedication to ever-increasing complexity defeats itself, not because complexity is “bad,” but because it is subject to diminishing returns. A sustainable society cannot be rooted in any kind of continual escalation; rather, a sustainable society must move naturally towards a dynamic equilibrium. The blind pursuit of complexity will not suffice for this end, since a dynamic equilibrium will require a society to reduce complexity as often as it increases.
The fact that social complexity has both a left wall and a right gutter does not imply stasis, or limit the possibilities for the future. It does not imply an atavistic throw-back to the stone age. Rather, the principle of sankofa means that primitivism is a new starting point, not an end. From there, our future prospects could lead us anywhere. We have seen that constantly increasing anything cannot work sustainably. That said, there is great cause for hope and excitement for what we might be able to invent and devise when we have adopted elegance as our measure of success.
Bibliography
- Corning, P.A. 2001. “The ‘Drunkard’s Walk’ Theory of Complexity.”
- Gould, S.J. 1997. Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. New York: Three Rivers Press.
- Greer, J.M. 2007. “Principles for Sustainable Tech.” In The Archdruid Report.
- Heylighen, F. 1996. “What is Complexity?” In Principia Cybernetica Web
- Manning, R. 2004. Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization. New York: North Point Press.
- McGuire, R. H. 1983. “Breaking down cultural complexity: inequality and heterogeneity.” In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, volume 6, ed. Michael B. Schiffer, pp. 91-142. New York: Academic Press.
- Taft, R. J. and Mattick, J.S. “Increasing biological complexity is positively correlated with the relative genome-wide expansion of non-protein-coding DNA sequences” [PDF]
- Tainter, J.A. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Vail, J. 2004a. “Vernacular Zen.” In Energy Intelligence.
- Vail, J. 2004b. “Conspicuous Simplicity.” In Energy Intelligence.
- Vail, J. 2006. “Elegant Technology.” In Energy Intelligence.
Dave Pollard has written about complex versus complicated systems, and the distinction he draws has carried some weight in certain online circles of the sustainability movement. I believe his distinction obscures more than it reveals, and this is the perfect place to say why.
The Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems distinguishes “complex” from “complicated” as such:
So again, we return to the defining, non-mechanistic nature of complex systems. Both complicated and complex systems are made up of many parts, and both are difficult to understand, but complicated systems operate mechanically; complex systems do not.
CSIRO offers emergence and self-organization as the criteria that distinguish complex systems from complicated systems, which again brings us back to the distinction of mechanistic vs. non-mechanistic systems.
Why, then, does Pollard draw the line between “knowable” and “unknowable”? In actual fact, we can and do know how complex systems operate. We know how climates, ecologies and societies all function, and though we can’t follow all the variables in our own heads, we’ve made fairly successful computer models that predict what happens to complex systems. They are knowable.
Cultures are not mechanical. They self-orgaize, adapt to outside pressure, and have emergent properties (including Daniel Quinn’s “Mother Culture”). The elements of culture interact with one another dynamically; changing one creates cascading changes throughout the culture in response. Cultures, therefore, cannot be complicated; they are complex.
An epistemological division between complicated and complex begins to redefine these terms from their normal usage, and serves to obscure much more important divisions, like the mechanical or adaptive nature of a system. When disturbed, does a system move back towards equilibrium (like an organism or an ecology or a culture)? Or does a slight disturbance lead to escalating problems and quickly catastrophic breakdown (like a jet)? This is a much more important distinction. By obscuring this in favor of an epistemological division that doesn’t even hold true, we essentially create a new jargon, which becomes all the more problematic as we try to cross-check our conclusions against the growing literature of others’ work on similar problems, who use the more established meanings for these terms. If a word hides more than it reveals, then it has failed in its most important task. When that happens, we need to abadnon that usage, in favor of those meanings that help us communicate more easily, rather than those that hinder communication.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 April 2007 @ 10:35 AM
Hey –
hmmm… well, you hit on biology and mathematics, but you completely ignored what physics and chaos theory have to say about complexity (which is, for me, where a lot of my thoughts originate….)
I still have some issues here, but I am going to take a little time to put my thoughts in order on this one.
Interesting article, even if I am going to be compelled to argue
Janene
Comment by janene — 24 April 2007 @ 10:39 AM
Really, chaos theory has a lot more to do with complicated systems than complex ones. Chaos theory deals with dynamics that are sensitive to initial conditions. Weather, for instance. Of course, weather is part of the complex system of climate—climate self-regulates, and that makes climate much easier to predict than weather. The way that a problem on a jet escalates into catastrophic breakdown, that’s a property of a complicated system. Complex systems are not sensitive to initial conditions. Their defining property is their self-regulation, the means by which they eliminate the effect of initial conditions.
The CFTC Conference brought together physicists, biologists and social scientists to compare notes on what “complexity” is all about, and they operated under the definition, “the collective behaviour of many interacting units that evolve towards self-organised steady states, whose global properties cannot be described at the level of the individual units.”
Physicists admit to having no good definition of complexity. But they also point to self-regulation and emergent properties as prime indicators.
Sounds to me like the physics definition of complexity doesn’t actually differ all that much.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 April 2007 @ 10:58 AM
Hey –
Okay, let’s take this by the numbers
Yes…. and no. The problem with Anthropologies take on complexity is that they subsume the meaning of complexity with their language and assumptions. By counting discreet elements, they are reinforcing the assumption that those discreet pieces are complexity in and of themselves, whereas, in fact, complexity is about the relationships, NOT the elements.
What this says to me is that while they may intuitively grasp that cultures are complex (which of course they are) there is no reason to assume that a culture with 10,000 artifacts is more complex than a culture with 1,000 artifacts. I know that is going to sound really wrong to you and that is the core of our disagreement. The more complicated an artifact (material or not), the more linear the relationship between that artifact and others becomes. So, for example, the relationship of an atlatl within a primitive culture to the other elements of that culture is far more complex (because it impacts most characteristics of the culture) than the relationship matrix between a moon lander and American culture.
…..Right Gutter of Maximal Complexity. Nice. Good to see that getting more airplay
And of course, I agree with all of that….
hmmm. I have a bit of a problem with this. I understand where this definition of elegance comes from… and I understand why it has been formulated this way. But this gets into the distinction between designed and evolved systems. Sure, the most elegant math equation or computer program IS defined by fewer parts. However, what can you think of that is more elegant than an ecosystem? And it is decidedly NOT defined by fewer parts. It is defined, quite specifically by simple interactions. Each piece of the whole just going about its own business, while other parts do the same, and yet, at the end of the day – wow. Just try and tell me that it is not complex. But it is also, quite obviously, elegant as well.
This is where physics comes in as well. Another data point where it is quite obvious that simple interactions (every interaction at the subatomic level) create the entire freaking universe out of, probably, just one fundamental ‘thing’, based entirely on the relationships between different bits of that one thing (I’m talking about strings, here)
I think you are going to need to back that one up a bit. I agree entirely that individual organisms have to deal with cost-benefit when engaging in increased complexity. But I would submit that this is because individual organisms do not have the same level of elegance (or, at least, may not….) and that it is the lack of elegance that creates the ‘right gutter’. By comparison, an ecological system has exactly as many pieces as it can use and no more. But there is no diminishing marginal returns inherent, aside from the most basic level wherein a given organisms will not survive if it is not able to establish a useful role in the ecology.
I think, perhaps, this is pushing against my alert flags re: evolution of populations. Can’t happen. And suggesting that an entire ecology ‘evolves’ as a whole is absolutely beyond the pale. What I don’t know is whether you intended to go that way. Or realized that you might be……
Re Dave Pollard. I agree with everything you are saying there…. but what Dave writes about is how we solve complex vs complicated problems. And points out that complicated problems are easy whereas complex problems must be addressed in a different way. (A non-linear, intuitive way, rather than a linear, bandage approach) So I am not quite sure what you are trying to dispute with him on?
Sure. Absolutely. Or put in another way, as I am so fond of doing…. complex systems are defined by non-linear equations. Scientists try to solve those equations all of the time, bu they do so by cheating – by fudging the equations to make them linear. This is the fundamental problem our culture has with trying to understand complexity. We see it, and then we ‘make it go away’ because our reductionist approach to, well, everything, does not have an adequate way of dealing with complexity.
No. I’m sorry, Jason. But that is simply not true.
Dividing weather and climate? That is reductionism at its finest. Sure, we can talk about the two things as if they were discreet, but quite clearly they are not. Climate is nothing more or less that thousands, millions (or whatever) of nested weather patterns. If enough changes occur in those nested sets then the macro system is said to change as well. But WE create that distinction. Not the universe. We decide when ‘climate’ has changed from A to B, based upon distinctions that we create so that we can decide when it has changed.
I know…. that’s a lot of semantics. But that does not make untrue. We could just as easily say that climate is constantly changing. And it is.
Complex systems are absolutely sensitive to initial conditions. You are describing it as if initial conditions (always) create positive feedback loops, but in fact, they simply create feedback – and this feedback is part and parcel of what allows complex systems to self regulate.
Oh sure. I was pointing more to what physics (or more properly quantum physics and cosmology) have to show us about complex systems and how they work.
Janene
Comment by janene — 24 April 2007 @ 12:16 PM
Errr … yes and no. Cultural elements aren’t entirely discrete in anthropology, because culture is adaptive. Morever, complexity is distinguished by its relationships, but it’s still a question of how many elements. It simply adds the stipulation that the elements do not contribute to the system in a merely additive fashion. But complexity is still measured by the number and distinctiveness of those elements.
On the contrary, that’s precisely what it means. Every culture is adaptive, meaning that every one of those artifacts has more than a simply additive relationship to the culture. The culture is more than just the sum of its elements, the culture itself has emergent, self-regulating properties. But complexity is still the measure of the number and distinctiveness of those elements. What distinguishes complexity is the type of system those elements add up to, not the count of elements involved. So a culture with 10,000 elements is definitely more complex than one with 1,000, because all 9,000 of those added elements also make more than a simple additive contribution to the adaptive system.
An atlatl might impact a larger percentage of a culture, but that’s only because the culture has fewer elements. The NASA program has impacted nearly every aspect of our culture, and is composed of other elements that had similar impacts. Burke’s Connections series is a great illustration of this. I see your point, but for once, I can actually stand up in defense of civilization. It’s no less reactive as a culture than any other, and the introduction of any new element, in any culture, has culture-wide ramifications, so an atlatl cannot be more complex than a lunar lander because it affects the culture more widely. Both impact their cultures equally.
As I pointed out, ecosystems achieve elegance through reduction of parts. The same elements come into play again and again. Of course, ecologies also show a good bit of complexity, so they ultimately balance the two. There’s quite a few things more elegant than ecosystems, then. A lever, for instance: no balance of complexity vs. elegance, just elegance in nearly its purest form.
Which is why complexity has its limits. Elegance is the opposite of complexity, so the more elegant you make some parts, that frees up more potential complexity in other parts. But even where the energy is there, you don’t see ecologies going beyond old growth forest complexity. Succession stabilizes there, it doesn’t keep on going. That’s a fairly clear indication that increasing complexity in an ecosystem passes a point of diminishing returns, so the trend towards complextiy in succession stops there.
Well, that’s diminishing returns, isn’t it? As niches are filled, the roles available for new species dry up. There’s no need for more species, and complexity stops escalating. In fact, old growth forests actually reduce their complexity somewhat from maximal biodiversity, right? The first phases of succession go quickly; grasses are there for months, shrubs for years, new growth for decades and old growth for centuries. The trend of complexity slows down, and then settles into equilibrium. Classic dimishing returns, no?
I’m not entirely sure what you mean–populations are the only things that can evolve. Individuals can’t. We know that ecologies move towards “equilibrium,” this is what succession is all about (and what makes them complex systems, e.g., self-regulating). The first grass communities have an evolutionary niche, but the system isn’t stable. Brushes come in the same way, then new growth trees, then old growth. There’s escalating complexity as more and different species are introduced to the ecological system, but eventually you begin to reach a point of diminishing returns. Niches are being filled, the system is stabilizing, there’s less and less room for new species, and increases in complexity level off.
I think his way of dealing with them is slightly off, because his delineation is slightly off. Complex systems break our assumptions of reductionism. They can only be studied as a whole system. But they can be understood: it just requires consilience, rather than reductionism.
Every climatologist I’ve ever talked to went to great pains to make clear that climate is different from weather.
Well sure, but it’s not simply additive. Those weather phenomena that make up climate are more than just additive. The climate they create is self-regulating, and it has emergent properties. The weather may be chaotic, but the climate eliminates the impact of initial conditions.
The key is “sensitive to initial conditions.” What makes a system chaotic is that initial conditions produce positive feedback loops, resulting in big changes from little inputs. What makes a system complex is that it self-regulates, so even big inputs are absorbed, reduced, and their impact is eliminated.
Wikipedia puts it this way:
What I take from that is that complexity is the opposite of chaos: chaotic systems are easily pushed out of equilibrium, while complex systems regain their equilibrium.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 April 2007 @ 1:02 PM
Certainly it makes sense that scientifically organized efforts to deal with human problems must take account of manifold interconnected events. Although it is necessary to recognize and acknowledge the complexities
inherent in cultural life and the natural world, it is equally important that a
dizzying array of variables not blind us to certain scientific facts of biophysical reality. Humankind could be bound by such predominant facts because the workings ofthe natural world exist independently of human
wishes and beliefs.With this in mind, please note that Russell Hopfenberg has provided
an elegant model that accounts for the salient factors governing the dynamics of global human population numbers. According to his findings, the size of the human population is determined primarily by food availability. The realization that complexity and elegance are derived from different points of view—that there is complexity and
simplicity in the world we inhabit—does not necessarily mean that one is correct and the other incorrect. To the contrary, it could be
that each point of view is valid based on the scope of observation.
According to Hopfenberg, the dynamics of human population
numbers is no longer a preternatural phenomenon but a knowable one, and that human population dynamics is not essentially different from the population dynamics of other species in both the complexity and the simplicity
of the governing elements.
A point in human history may have
been reached when the current scale and anticipated growth rate of
economic expansion worldwide, increasing per human consumption
of limited natural resources, and skyrocketing absolute global human population numbers can be seen as soon to become patently unsustainable.
Regardless of how long a predominant culture of the human
species prizes certain of its unbridled growth activities and CHOOSES TO LEAVE THEM UNCHECKED, surely it is not too late to accept limits to growth of the human economy, human consumption, and human numbers
worldwide by altering human behavior accordingly.
Thanks,
Steve
Comment by Steven Earl Salmony — 24 April 2007 @ 1:06 PM
Of course elements are not simply additive. But you are making no distinction between elements that are related in linear fashion and those that are related fractally (for lack of a better word). Note, I did not say NASA or the space program, I said “A moon lander�. Because, specifically, you are talking about elements. And that particular element may have relationships with 100 other elements. By comparison, something like, say, a television may have billions of interactions. So when, where, how do anthropologists recognize this discrepancy?
The only way to take that into consideration is to focus attention on relationships rather than elements. Or perhaps we should be talking about nodes and connections.
Now, I do need to clarify, I am not actually suggesting that it is common or likely that a culture with 1000 elements is more complicated than a culture with 10,000. But I AM suggesting that you cannot necessarily make that distinction based on simple, quantitative data.
That’s not really, actually true, though. An early succession ecology is no less complex, no less elegant than an old growth forest. It is in the self regulating behavior, redundancy and resiliency that all ecologies share. As you pointed out elsewhere, only a small portion of a truly healthy biosphere is taken up by old growth forest – but I don’t think it has anything to do with diminishing returns and has everything to do with diversity. All things must pass. The old gives way to the new and whatever other cliches you want to throw out there.
Ah ha! The core of our miscommunication… or is it real disagreement?
An individual cannot evolve. Sure. Leave Lamark at the door. However evolution can only express itself in individuals. Populations change as the result of selection at the individual level. There has been some pretty heavy debate about this one…. but I see it as one of those ‘no duh’ questions. A trait cannot become dominant in a population because it is advantageous to the group — traits can only be selected for when they are advantageous to the individual. And the same dynamic occurs in ecologies. The ecology as a whole DOES NOT evolve. The individuals within the community change in dynamic relation to one another, therefore the ecology as a whole can be said to change. Again…. lots of simple elements nested together in a complex pattern – this is where complexity (and elegance) comes from.
Again… this is the reductionistic view of what is occurring. In fact, no ecology is ’stable’ – like Gaea itself, ecologies exist in dynamic dis-equilibrium. No less the original grasses than the later old growth forest. It is only from our human-centric view that we can look at it and say that a grass community that survives for a few seasons is less stable (or less complex) than a forest community that survives for thousands of years. The difference is not in stability so much as it is in life cycle.
Yes.
Of course they did. And in one context that is correct. But in context of the nature of complexity and elegance, it’s too simplified.
In what context have I suggested that ANY of this is additive? Of course it is not. Climate and weather are both self-regulating, its merely a difference in scale. And no… climate does NOT eliminate sensitivity to initial conditions except in our description of it.
No, see this is exactly what I suggested was wrong with your argument and now you throw it back at me as self-evident: initial conditions do NOT specifically create positive feedback loops. They simply create feedback — and of course feedback is equally necessary for BOTH positive and negative loops. Ergo, complex systems ARE sensitive to initial conditions… but you need to look deeper to see if they will self correct or if they will spiral out of control. Both possibilities exist for a time…. but eventually a dynamic dis-equilibrium will be achieved.
Well, yeah, there is a problem because I reject outright that commentary for Wikipedia….
This goes back to my initial research into Chaos Theory…. and the insight I had that Chaotic Systems are no more Chaotic than any other complex system…. they are simply complex systems caught up in positive feedback. And they are, intuitively understandable and predictable – just not mathematically predictable. Watch a fractal for a few hours… and then tell me that there is no way to determine where it is going to go next…….. mathematically it is true, but I bet you money, that you could still do it
Part of the problem, of course, is that Chaos Theory, as it stands, is pretty much ‘dead’ science. They realized that it really did not describe very much, once they explored further into other related fields… so they never really went back and ‘fixed’ it to take new understandings into account. They just let it dry up and die. Of course, we can still read about it and that leaves us with the impression that the info from two decades back is still cutting edge – but it is not.
Janene
Comment by janene — 24 April 2007 @ 2:32 PM
Hmm, my “Complex Analysis” and “Chaos Theory” is pretty rusty, but I thought that all mathematically complex systems were sensitive to initial conditions…?
What’s more, I don’t see how weather, forests, or cultures are not sensitive to initial conditions, perhaps I’m being dense here. If so, could someone provide a more illustrative example?
Also, I thought that “Chaos Theory” was picked up by Artificial Life researchers. For some reason I was under the impression it factored into genetic algorithms. That seems like a loooong time back that I was paying attention to that scene, tho’.
Comment by jhereg — 24 April 2007 @ 4:03 PM
This is fascinating stuff! I’ve been following Jason’s writings here and Janene’s on IshThink. If I can jump in here, I think there is another piece to the puzzle: complexity requires resources. The available resources determine the point of diminishing returns.
For example, start out with a bare piece of land. The ecology will get more and more complex until the scarcest resource limits the marginal return on additional complexity. In a rainforest, the limiting resource is sunlight. In a desert, it’s water. Change the climate (resources), and the system will reach a new equilibrium, either more complex or less complex depending on the resources available.
Similarly, one can argue that it is not complexity per se that leads to a civilization’s collapse, but complexity PLUS a loss of resources.
Comment by Danneau — 24 April 2007 @ 4:53 PM
Hi again,
I am getting a sense of the ‘complex analysis’ and ‘chaos theory’ in this discussion. What appears to be missing from this thread is attention to what is elegant. Perhaps Jason can help us here.
Thanks,
Steve
Comment by Steven Earl Salmony — 24 April 2007 @ 7:42 PM
There is a metaphysical assumption behind Gould’s thesis, which is that the universe is cosmologically bounded, i.e., that it has limits in scope, duration, and scale. This is understandable, given the muddled state of cosmological theory, but it does not make him correct. The floor he posits — and by extension, the ceiling you posit — are horizon artifacts. Gould selects an arbitrary scale — e.g., the biological — and concludes that there is a minimum threshold of complexity below which evolution does not function. But this is nonsense. Evolution, in its most generalized sense, is a process of variation and selection, and it can be observed at all levels of reality, from the quantum foam to galactic superclusters. Life, as a thermodynamically-driven autopoietic process, is scale-independent; it can exist anywhere along the continuum from the immeasurably small to the immeasurably large. The life with which we are most familiar is biological life, composed of organic compounds, but this is not the only possibility the universe has to offer. There are other substrates, with their own distinct properties, that can achieve structural efficiencies and utilize power sources not readily accessible to organic life forms. Human technology demonstrates this principle quite nicely. If biological succession leads to climax ecosystems in which matter and energy are maximally recycled, what is to say technological succession doesn’t lead to the same? What if the human race is a bridge between substrates, a pioneer species for a latent synthetic ecology? In this context, the ordeal we experience as civilization is a necessary process by which the ground is prepared for more mature successors. It’s painful and destructive, yes, but little different from the experience of lichen, which ultimately “ruins” its habitat by churning bedrock into soil.
Life is life. The form it takes is cosmically irrelevant. Why invest so much in a form of life that, as you describe it, is doomed to perish with the next cometary impact, or when the oceans photodissociate into space, or when the sun swells into a red giant and consumes the Earth? Why not migrate to a new substrate with an expanded range and spread throughout the galaxy? If the universe is doomed to inevitable heat death (which I don’t believe it is, but we’re addressing the prognosis for the cosmos implicit in your curiously deterministic worldview), what difference does it make?
Comment by Anonymous — 24 April 2007 @ 9:50 PM
According to Edible Forest Gardens, a permaculture book, old growth forests have been shown to be somewhat less complex than more open systems. A fairly continuous canopy is not conducive to complexity. If the old growth forest is in an area that has lots of disturbances to break up the canopy then it can be very diverse, but without high winds, lightning, elephants, or humans complexity will decline as the trees cast their pall.
Comment by Scott — 25 April 2007 @ 9:16 AM
Hi again,
Perhaps an example of elegant research will be useful here.
According to Hopfenberg, global population growth of the human species is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop in which food availability drives population growth and this growth in human numbers gives rise to the misperception that food production needs to be increased even more.
Data indicate that the world’s human population grows by approximately two percent per year. All segments of it grow by about 2%. Every year there are more people with brown eyes and more people with blue ones; more people who are tall and more short people. It also means that there are more people growing up well fed and more people growing up hungry. The starving segment of the population goes up just like the well-fed segment of the population. We may or may not be reducing hunger by increasing food production; however, we are most certainly producing more and more hungry people.
Hopfenberg’s evidence suggests that the magnificently successful efforts of humankind to increase food production in order to feed a growing population results in even greater increase in human population numbers.
The perceived need to increase food production to feed a growing population is a widely shared and consensually validated misperception, a denial of the physical reality and the space-time dimension. If people are starving at a given moment of time, increasing food production cannot help them. Are these starving people supposed to be waiting for sowing, growing and reaping to be completed? Are they supposed to wait for surpluses to reach them? Without food they would die. In such circumstances, increasing food production for people who are starving is like tossing parachutes to people who have already fallen out of the airplane. The produced food arrives too late; however, this does not mean human starvation is inevitable.
Consider that human population dynamics are not biologically different from the population dynamics of other species. Human organisms, other species and even microorganisms have essentially common population dynamics. We do not find hoards of starving roaches, birds, squirrels, alligators, or chimpanzees in the absence of food as we do in many civilized human communities today because these non-human species are not annually increasing their own production of food.
Please take note that among tribal peoples in remote original habitats, we do not find people starving. Like non-human species, “primitive” human beings live within the carrying capacity of their environment. History is replete with examples of early humans and other ancestors not increasing their food production annually, but rather living successfully off the land for thousands of years as hunters and gatherers of food.
Prior to the agricultural revolution and the production of more food than was needed fo