BOOK REPORT: Lately I’ve been reading Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop, one of those “stories of modern science”. Some people see Complexity as a follow-up to Chaos by James Gleick. Both books tell the story of how a group of free-thinking scientists started coming up with new ways to mathematically describe the real world in all of its, well, complexity and chaos. But in fact, the two concepts, though related, are actually at opposite ends of a pole; chaos tries to describe how chaos emerges from seemingly orderly physical processes, whereas complexity tries to describe how order emerges from chaotic situations. (Hows that for yin and yang?).
Both books are real mind-expanders, if you can plod your way through the concepts (very little math). Chaos gives useful insights on how orderly things break down; for example, it has given medical researchers some information on what happens before and during a heart attack. Complexity, by contrast, asks how did order ever emerge from a universe where chaos (e.g., entropy) seems to be the general rule? How do we have life and societies and economies at all in a world where things generally fall apart? A fundamental Christian might say that God calls all the shots, and thus keeps things from going totally bonkers by keeping his hand on the wheel 24-7. But the complexity scientists seem to have a different belief. They seem to see something inherent to the basic rules of the universe that allows and even encourages self-organizing behavior. (I.e., as though God loaded the dice).
These rules are somehow embedded in every little bit of matter and energy. They aren’t orchestrated by any central commander; they just follow their own little rules, and somehow, as an unintended result, things just come together! Universes form, gas congeals into stars, heavy elements form into planets, molecules on those planets grow more complex and somehow pick up the trick of reproduction, life grows more complex and somehow picks up the trick of self-awareness expression, and societies and economies and religions emerge from the whole mess. For instance, when you see a flock of birds flying together, do you ever wonder how they do it? Did they plan it out before they all took off? Well, no. Each bird just seems to follow a few simple rules that are instinctive, and voila, you get beautiful flock formations that take birds on journies that last thousands of miles.
Complexity was published in 1992, but most of the story line occurred during the 80s. So here we are more than a decade later, and it’s fair to ask whether the concept of complexity, i.e. self-organizing and multi-agent systematic behavior, has gotten anywhere. Actually, I believe it has. Think about computer programming. Up until the 1990s, most programmers were taught to think of the program as the boss. Data comes in and the program guides it each step of the way to some kind of output. That was called “structured programming”. But in the 90s, the idea of “object oriented programming” started emerging. Instead of assuming that the program was always the boss, the idea of “OOP” was that the program should be broken into little independent pieces, i.e. “objects”, that individually react with the data and then interact with each other in the quest for an output. The point of OOP was not to guarantee that you got a predictable output for each variation of input data; instead, you made sure that each object works properly, and then let the chips fall where they may. I myself was taught basic structural programming, so OOP is not an easy idea to master. But it does seem to have a lot in common with the ideas that Mr. Waldrop discusses in his book.
I saw another bit of evidence today in an article on Spacedaily.com about a project to build aircraft and spacecraft that can actually repair themselves in flight when something goes wrong! Imagine if the Space Shuttle Columbia had that ability and could have self-repaired the scratch on the wing edge that doomed it on re-entry. Well, the technology sounds pretty far out; but consider your own skin. When you get a scratch, you don’t have to think about how to heal it. OK, sure, you clean it and apply antibiotic, but the basic work of clotting and repairing the cut is done automatically by your blood and skin cells. Your mind is not controlling the process. Each of your skin cells and blood cells know what to do when they get violated by a knife. No one cell can save the day, but put the efforts of thousands of them together, and you thus get a scab and a healing process. So, why not invent a process that could similarly repair a broken hydraulic pump or a cracked fuel line?
Well, OK, as the book title implies, the process is rather complex and it ain’t gonna be available overnight. But based on the work of the complexity scientists, it does seem doable. If you’re interested, the project is called “Smart Spaces” and is being done by CSIRO, the Austrialian national research institute. You can check it out at www.smartspaces.csiro.au/
As for me, I’m playing around right now with a simple little Excel spreadsheet meant to demonstrate complex emergent behavior, or something like it anyway. It’s inspired by the “Game of Life” computer simulation, as described in the book (as with the GOL, the status of each little zone on my spreadsheet is dependent on what goes on in each of the zones surrounding it). But instead of the little transient structures that emerge on the Game of Life, my spreadsheet shows the life (and sometimes death) of an orange blob which unintentionally tries to stay alive despite the negative forces of the dark blue zone (the shadow of death!). I’m still fooling around with the program, but every now and then the blob does something that kind of reminds you of a group of interactive living cells (i.e., a person), or a group of interactive living persons (i.e., a civilization). The whole thing is rather crude, but I may nevertheless put it up on my web site for anyone interested to download. Stay tuned for further announcements, complexity fans!