Complexity: the Emerging Science at

the Edge of Order and Chaos

Book by [[M. Mitchell Waldrop]] (1992)
Full text source
[[TL;DR: Complexity]]
Visions of the Whole

M. Waldrop explores a lot of scenarios on what causes a lot of phenomena that we see around us,
such as the fall of the Soviet Union, the real reason why dinosaurs went extinct, and how there's so
much order in the world we see today. He explores the idea of order and chaos and how it becomes
one in the balance known as the edge of Chaos. The edge of Chaos is where there is neither a lock
of things in place nor is there any uncertainty. It's where there is ample creativity and where
problems tend to some themselves. That's the theory of complexity.
He states that the science of complexity is still very new and wide-ranging, yet his aim is to establish
complexity as an up-and-coming entirely legitimate new branch of scientific thinking that moves
beyond the old linear, reductionist approach that has dominated scientific thought since the days of
Newton!
This book is essentially a biography of the individuals involved, and account of complexity, and the
Santa Fe Institute.
1. The Irish Idea of a Hero

The author with the help of the life of Stanford University [[Professor William Brian Arthur]] who is the
leading mind on the science of chaos and who asked the most profound mystery in science: Why is
it that simple particles obey simple rules will sometimes engage in the most astonishing,
unpredictable behaviour? And why is it that simple particles will spontaneously organize themselves
into complex structures like stars, galaxies, snowflakes, and hurricanes—almost as if they were
obeying a hidden yearning for organization and order?
Prof. Arthur began to see that the old categories of science were beginning to dissolve, and in its
place, a new, unified science was out there waiting to be born. Instead of being a quest for the
ultimate particles, it would be about flux, change, and the forming and dissolving of patterns. Instead
of ignoring everything that wasn't uniform and predictable, it would have a place for individuality and
the accidents of history. Instead of being about simplicity, it would be about—well, complexity!
"Look out the window!", he would tell his colleagues. "Like it or not, the marketplace isn't
stable. The world isn't stable. It's full of evolution, upheaval, and surprise."
Prof. Arthur also put two and two together and believed in the principle known as "increasing
returns"—or in the King James translation, "To them that hath shall be given." Them that has gets.
The chapter outlines his ups and downs from academia to the Santa Fe Institute. By accident, he
became an economist with an idea of "increasing returns" and was laughed at.
At his lowest time when he failed in trying to share his insights with his peers, his wife told him, "I
guess it wouldn't be a revolution, would it, if everybody believed in it at the start, would it?"
The Education of a Scientist

"All the Irish heroes were revolutionaries. The highest peak of heroism is to lead an
absolutely hopeless revolution, and then give the greatest speech of your life from the
dock—the night before you're hanged."
After deciding to pursue economics, Prof. Arthur learned that he disagreed with Neoclassical
economics. It described a society where the economy is poised forever in perfect equilibrium, where
supply always exactly equals demand, where the stock market is never jolted by surges and
crashes, where no company ever gets big enough to dominate the market, and where the magic of a
perfectly free market makes everything turn out for the best. However, that is far from reality!
The "economic man," is a godlike being whose reasoning is always perfect. but we know humans
are not like that.
The question of why Bangladesh's population increased so much even though its development was
stagnant was a point of a lot of contemplation. He found out that there were many other factors at
play, for instance, if a woman were to lose her husband, her relatives and neighbours might come in
and take everything she possessed, and hence it was in a young wife's interest to have as many
sons as possible as quickly as possible so that she would have grown sons to protect her in her old
age.
"Patriarchs, women who were trying to hold onto their husbands, irrigation communities—all
these interests combined to produce children and to stagnate development." In short: it was
the outcome of a network of individual and group interests at the village level.
Epiphany on the Beach
This part discusses the research style of Prof. Arthur. In his words, he "does not storm the gates
and try to use sheer power and brawn. No, he is patient. He camps outside and waits for the
answers to come."
This style occurred to him while he was reading on the beach about DNA. Essentially everything is
the same except for one very small difference in the DNA. DNA was patterns. So the question
becomes: Why is there order and structure in the world? Where doe it come from? "Left to
themselves.." the economy is self-organizing. Self-organizing structures are ubiquitous in nature.
Self-organization is the emergence of pattern and order in a system by internal processes, rather
than external constraints or forces.

What's the Point?

You have to look at the world as it is, not as some elegant theory says it ought to be.
Science is not about predicting but instead about explaining. e was concerned to go beyond
accidents. Outcomes don't just happen, there are dynamics at work. Nature, economics choose from
among the multiple choices.
Violating Sacred Ground
Here they describe how Prof. Arthur kept pushing for his theory in the face of all odds.

Prof. Arthur says that "Every democratic society has to solve a certain problem. If you let
people do their own thing, how do you assure the common good? In Germany, that problem
is solved by everybody watching everybody else out the windows. People will come right up
to you and say, 'Put a cap on that baby!' In England, they have this notion of a body of wise
people at the top looking after things. But in the United States, the ideal is maximum
individual freedom—or, "letting everybody be their own John Wayne and run around with
guns."
However much that ideal is compromised in practice, it still holds mythic power. However, increasing
returns cut to the heart of that myth!
Martin Luther could merely nail his theses on the church door at Wittenberg and that was enough.
However, Prof. Arthur had no church door in modern academia, and it frustrated him because an
idea that hasn't been published an established journal doesn't officiallyexist.
A colleague of his at Stanford all of a sudden got recognition and Arthur felt he was being discredited
for his own idea. But that didn't last long because he got invited to a new think tank in New Mexico
called the Santa Fe Institute.
2. The Revolt of the Old Turks
This chapter outlines the historical beginnings of the Santa Fe Institute. Some would even compare
it to ancient Athens!
The think tank was gathering some of the country's best minds, such as [[George Cowan]], who
headed the group. [[Murray Gell-Mann]], a physicist, was the institute's founder. Cowan came from
the nuclear age. He was part of the development of the atomic bomb. He came to understand the
complexity and he got tired of tunnel vision. The best part was, that he was intrigued by chaos! If a
butterfly flaps its wings in Texas a hurricane in the Atlantic is affected.
The Fellows
This part spoke about the working together of great minds. They were divided into two camps at first,
but Gell-Mann broke the [[logjam]]. Phil Anderson of Princeton met up with Gell-Mann, who would
mention the institute wherever he went, and that's when complexity began to take on a new look.
The property of emergence was introduced (the same thing that Arthur meant by the word
"messiness").
Although water is made up of many H2O molecules it isn't until many billions are put together that
we get water. Freeze it, it turns to ice, and heat it and it turns to steam. Something
\emerges/\emerges/.
3. Secrets of the Old One
Secrets of the Old One
[[Stuart Kauffman]], one of the great minds at the institute, was the type who displayed an equal ratio
of talking to listening. The way he thought things through was to talk out loud, talk about them and
talk about them. His big thing was "order."
Order told us how we could be an accident of nature and be very much more than an accident. He
took Darwin further: Darwin didn't know about self-organization or understand complexity. So the
story of life is a story of accident and happenstance as well as order!
Order
This part speaks about Kauffman and his evolution. Einstein was his ideal and looking for the
Secrets of the Old One (God) became his obsession, too. He first thought to be a playwright but his
characters babbled too much about the meaning of life and what it means to be a good person. He
then moved to philosophy and ethics. He came to wonder what it was about science that allowed it
to discover the nature of the world? And what is it about the mind that allows it to know the world?
At Oxford, his tutor gave him a series of brain teasers which introduced him to modelling and
simulations. He gave up philosophy for med school to know the secrets of the Old One. Biology
stunned him as he examined the cell to egg to birth and so on. Why did eggs hatch babies whole
and perfect? In the chaos, there is order and a plan, and he had to find it!
Death and Life

There is an irony in how two different people from two different backgrounds arrive at the same
place from opposite sides. Kauffman calls it "order" and Arthur called it "messiness." They used the
opposite word and came from the opposite direction.
By starting from different places they arrived at the same place. Arthur had an economic problem:
technological change. It is like an evolving ecosystem where technologies are highly interconnected
webs, a network which is dynamic and unstable.
For instance, a new technology comes along: the car. It replaces the horse and all subsystems that
supported the horse die too, stables, water troughs, currying boys, blacksmiths, etc. But the new
technology, the car, fosters new subsystems, gas stations, mechanics, etc. This is what Arthur calls
**"increasing∗∗"increasing returns"**returns"∗∗.
This helped Kauffman see that technology was just like the origin of life. Life may be an accident
but it has an incessant compulsion to self-organize.
When exploring economies: innovations result in new combos of old technologies, and then possible
innovations go up as more technologies go up. Therefore, if a country becomes more diversified and
increases its complexity it will undergo growth and experience an "economic takeoff".
4. "You Guys Really Believe That?"
Perpetual Novelty
[[John Henry Holland]] explained that the economy was a "complex adaptive system". In the
natural world that meant brains, ecologies, cells, etc, whilst in the human world, it meant cultural and
social communities, political parties, or scientific communities. All of these seemed to share certain
crucial properties:
First, each is a network of many "agents" acting in parallel. Each agent finds itself in an environment
produced by its interaction with other agents. It is constantly acting and reacting so nothing is fixed.
The coherent behaviour of a system arises from competition and cooperation.
Second, a complex adaptive system has many levels of organization. Complex adaptive systems are
constantly revising and rearranging their building blocks as they gain experience. All systems are
learning, evolving, and adapting.
Third, all complex adaptive systems anticipate the future. Anticipation and prediction are based on
various internal models of the world. They have niches into which agents fall to perform their duties.
Systems never achieve equilibrium unless they are dead. Simulations are key.
Building Blocks
Evolution and learning are like a game. The agent plays against the environment and if it wins goes
on. Either way, feedback shows they need to improve their performance: Adaptation. That's what
this business of "emergence" is all about: building blocks at one level and combining them into new
building blocks at a higher level.
6. Life at the Edge of Chaos
The Fledgling Director
Prof. Arthur went on to ask what each of his colleagues at Santa Fe wanted. It was essentially his
game: just don't be boring. So he created "economy under glass" as including the old thoughts got
him in trouble and called insufficiently innovative. He thought it would be good politics.
The call was for adaptation, evolution, learning, multiple equilibria, emergence, and
complexity. Find that Church Door!!! The economic summit was to use emergence. 20 people
participated and they were to reinvent the field.
The Santa Fe Institute
This place was now fueled on intellectual power!
. Where do you set the dial of rationality? Let the agents set it themselves. They will try to do
something no matter the environment. Here was the elusive Santa Fe approach:
emphasize increasing returns and evolution and learning.
use models that were psychologically realistic.
view economy as organic, adaptive, surprising, alive.
view world on edge of chaos.
They wanted the "internal models" to emerge, to form inside agents as they learned so that
economics could be done in a different way. The Santa Fe approach was a new approach, a whole
new world view.

Wet Labs for the Mind

This part explored the fact that economics and simulations had a dismal history. But the Stock
Market game gave them hope. It reacted as humans would. They realized they saw a glimmer of life,
they had a system which exhibited emergent property.