Complexity: A Guided Tour

Paul Schumann

This is an excellent book to study if you are just beginning to read about complexity
and are interested in the application of the science of complexity to artificial and
real life. Melanie Mitchell is well qualified to teach us about this field as she has
been connected with Santa Fe Institute since 1989, five years after it was founded.
The book is well written, easy to read and follows impeccable logic.

The book begins with a quote from Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach,
“Reductionism is the most natural thing in the world to grasp. It's simply the belief
that 'a whole can be understood completely if you understand its parts, and the
nature of their sum.' No one her left brain could reject reductionism.” In complexity
reductionism doesn't apply. You can't understand a complex system as a sum of its
parts. It can only be understood as a gestalt.

“How is it that those systems in nature we call complex and adaptive-brains, insect
colonies, the immune system, cells, the global economy, biological evolution-
produce such complex and adaptive behavior from underlying, simple rules? How
can interdependent yet self-interested organisms come together to cooperate on
solving problems that affect their survival as a whole? And are there any general
principles or laws that apply to such phenomena? Can life, intelligence, and
adaptation be seen as mechanistic and computational? If so, could we build truly
intelligent and living machines? And if we could, would we want to?

I have learned that as the lines between disciplines begin to blur, the content of
scientific discourse also gets fuzzier. People in the field of complex systems talk
about many vague and imprecise notions such as spontaneous order, self-
organization, and emergence (as well as "complexity" itself).”

The author describes the following properties of complex adaptive systems:

“When looked at in detail, these various systems are quite different, but viewed at
an abstract level they have some intriguing properties in common:

Complex collective behavior

Signaling and information processing: All these systems produce and use
information and signals from both their internal and external environments.

Adaptation: All these systems adapt-that is, change their behavior to improve their
chances of survival or success-through learning or evolutionary processes.”

She follows this with two versions of a definition of a complex system:

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1. “A system in which large networks of components with no central control and

simple rules of operation give rise to complex behavior, sophisticated information
processing, and adaption via learning or evolution”
2. “A system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self organizing behavior”

She adds the comment that some people apply these concepts only to adaptive
complex systems, but that she does not. Which is unfortunate because her
definition limits complexity essentially to living systems, leaving out many non
adaptive complex systems generally accepted as examples of complexity. But, her
book is limited to a train of thought that leads to artificial and real life, and she
stays almost consistent with that view.

She also reports that there are no agreed measurements of complexity.

With this review of the development and state of complexity science in general, the
author then launches into the logical development of the history and state of
artificial life:

• Life and evolution in computers

• Computation writ large
• Network thinking
• The past and future of the sciences of complexity

“…how did life originate in the first place? And what exactly constitutes being alive?
As you can imagine, both questions are highly contentious in the scientific world,
and no one yet has definitive answers. Although I do not address the first question
here, there has been some fascinating research on it in the complex systems
community.

The second question-what is life, exactly?-has been on the minds of people probably
for as long as "people" have existed. There is still no good agreement among either
scientists or the general public on the definition of life. Questions such as "When
does life begin?" or "What form could life take on other planets?" are still the
subject of lively, and sometimes vitriolic, debate.

The idea of creating artificial life is also very old, going back at least two millennia
to legends of the Golem and of Ovid's Pygmalion, continuing in the nineteenth-
century story of Frankenstein's monster, all the way to the present era of movies
such as Blade Runner and The Matrix, and computer games such as "Sim Life."

These works of fiction both presage and celebrate anew, technological version of
the "What is life?" question: Is it possible for computers or robots to be considered
"alive"? This question links the previously separate topics of computation and of life
Paul Schumann, PO Box 161475, Austin, TX 78716, 512.632.6586,
paschumann2009@gmail.com
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and evolution.”

This book is not an easy read, but it's worth the effort. The author has done an
outstanding job of writing about the science of complexity in a way that facilitates
understanding.

Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell, Oxford University Press, 2009, 349
p

Paul Schumann, PO Box 161475, Austin, TX 78716, 512.632.6586,

paschumann2009@gmail.com