Category:Complexity
Here, we'll keep items about complexity theory, evolution, emergence, and the like, i.e. 'the laws of change' in the physical and social world.
Quotes
On the Difference Between Systems Analysis and Evolutionary Studies
"In contrast to the system approach that considers systems and structures as essentially static (or concentrates on their functioning), evolutionary approaches focus on those special conditions and factors that determine qualitative evolutionary transformations and reorganizations of such systems."
- Leonid Grinin, Andrey Korotayev et al. [1]
Entropy vs Neguentropy
"Erwin Schrödinger, in his seminal 1944 essay “What is Life?” Schrödinger approached the question of biological organisms from the perspective of a physicist—that is, perspective the angle of energy and entropy. He recognized that “the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from the environment” (Cambridge University Press edition, p. 73). He called this metabolic process of generating order through “drinking” orderliness from the environment and then exporting entropy back into the environment “negative entropy,” or “negentropy” for short."
- Brendan Graham Dempsey [2]
Brendan Graham Dempsey on Complexification and Knowledge
"The revelations of complexity science have been truly revolutionary. Across the many fields of inquiry in this diverse new scientific paradigm—from non-equilibrium thermodynamics, to origins of life research, to evolutionary biology, to consciousness studies—new discoveries and insights have been accumulating which radically shift our sense of how the universe works as well as our place in it. Ideas like self-organization, dissipative adaptation, emergent levels, and emergent causation have truly reframed reality as we know it. Today, these insights are being synthesized and integrated, yielding fascinating new grand unified theories that offer nothing short of a whole new worldview for our time. In these comprehensive, integrative visions, we can finally see how all of these incredible discoveries hang together—what it all really means, and what it means for meaning itself."
- Brendan Graham Dempsey [3]
Context
Recommendations by Brendan Graham Dempsey:
In her book Complexity: A Guided Tour (p. 13), complexity scientist Melanie Mitchell defines a “complex system” as “a system in which large networks of components with no central control and simple rules of operation give rise to complex collective behavior, sophisticated information processing, and adaptation via learning or evolution.” She continues: “Systems in which organized behavior arises without an internal or external controller or leader are sometimes called self-organizing. Since simple rules produce complex behavior in hard-to-predict ways, the macroscopic behavior of such systems is sometimes called emergent.” She then offers a second definition of a complex system as “a system that exhibits nontrivial emergent and self-organizing behaviors.”
The idea of emergence has thus come to be central to the discipline of complexity science as it has arisen since the late 20th century. Of course, contemporary theories of emergence have been considerably refined, clarified, and developed since their original pioneering by the British Emergentists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Theorists now argue over distinctions between “weak” vs. “strong” emergence, “ontological” vs. “epistemological” emergence, etc. The finer points of this philosophical discourse has become quite technical, and would be too much for a book of this size and focus. Those interested in a transdisciplinary overview of emergence can consult works such as Clayton, Philip and Paul Davies (eds.) (2006) The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion (Oxford University Press, Oxford). Those keen to explore the more nuanced philosophical discourse around emergence can check out Gibb, Sophie et al. (eds.) (2019) The Routledge Handbook of Emergence (Routledge, London)."
(https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/emergentism-notes)
Key Resources
Articles
The Evolution of Complexity:
- The Evolution of Complexity in the Cosmos and Matter Regimes, see: Evolution of the Physical Universe Before the Emergence of Life
- The Evolution of Complexity of Life and Biological Regimes
- The Evolution of Complexity in Human Society and Cultural Regimes
Books
- Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World. By Adyahanzi, Brendan Graham Dempsey. Metamodern Spirituality Series, Vol. VI. [4]. See: Emergentism as a Religion of Complexity
- Bobby Azarian. The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity. Listen to the podcast with the author: Bobby Azarian on How the Universe Organizes Cosmic Complexity
- Daniel Paksi Personal Reality: The Emergentist Concept of Science , Evolution and Culture. Two Volumes. Eugene, OR, Pickwick Publications, 2019.
Podcasts
Pages in category "Complexity"
The following 168 pages are in this category, out of 168 total.
A
- Achieving Personal and Relational Coherence Through Enabling Constraints
- Adult Developmental Theory
- Ago-Agonistic Systems
- Alexander Bogdanov and Modern Systems Theory
- Alternative Heterodox Lineage in Evolutionary Thought and Its Emphasis on the Role of Consciousness
- Alternatives of Social Evolution
- Anti-Entropic Role of Information
- Arrow of Time
- Autodidactic Universe
B
- Bifurcation
- Big History Perspective on Evolution
- Bobby Azarian on How the Universe Organizes Cosmic Complexity
- Brendan Graham Dempsey on Emergentism
- Brendan Graham Dempsey on How the Epic of Evolution Continues in the Psycho-Cultural Domain
- Brendan Graham Dempsey on the Evolution of Consciousness as Added Dimensionality
- British Emergentist Movement
C
- Common Cybernetics
- Comparison of Biological and Social Macro-Evolution
- Complexity
- Complexity Economics
- Complexity in Human Society and Cultural Regimes
- Complexity of Life and Biological Regimes
- Complexity Science
- Complexity Spirals
- Complexity Theory
- Complexity Thresholds and Complexity Transitions
- Complexity-Based Management
- Computational Complexity of Democracy
- Computational Evidence for the Cognitive Costs of Sociality
- Cosmic Evolution as the Rise of Complexity in Nature
- Cosmic Evolutionary Philosophy
- Cybernetic Balance
- Cybernetic Communism
- Cybernetic Culture Research Unit
- Cybernetic Hypothesis
- Cybernetic Planning
- Cybernetic Production Regime
- Cybernetic Revolution
- Cybernetic Revolutionaries
- Cybernetic Self-Management
- Cybernetic Socialism
- Cybernetic State
- Cybernetics
- Cybernetics and Governance
- Cybernetics as an Antihumanism
- Cybernetics History
- Cybernetics Movement
- Cybernetics of Governance and the Cybersyn Project
- Cybernetics of the Commons
- Cybernetics Valuable to the Commons and for Understanding AI
D
E
- Economic and Social Cybernetics
- Economic Complexity Index
- Economic Cybernetics
- Eden Medina on Cybernetics and Revolution
- Efficiency vs Diversity and Its Optimal Balance for Sustainable Systems
- Emergence
- Emergence as Unifying Theme for 21Cy Science
- Emergence of a Global Brain
- Emergence of the Transdisciplinary Individual
- Emergence, Self-organization and Diversity in the KDE Community
- Emergentism
- Emergentism as a Religion of Complexity
- Energy Complexity Spiral
- Ententionality
- Evolution
- Evolution Almanac
- Evolution in the Matter Era
- Evolution of the Physical Universe Before the Emergence of Life
- Evolutionary Catastrophes and the Science of Mass Extinctions
- Evolutionary Laws
- Evolutionary Megaparadigms
- Evolutionary Order
- Evolutionary Principles of the Structure of the Universe
- Evolutionistics
F
H
- Herbert Spencer
- Hidden Connections
- Hierarchy Theory
- Historical Progression of Complexity, Networks and Hierarchy
- History of Cybernetics
- Homo Hacker
- How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity
- How the World Became Complex
- How Thermodynamic Science Undermined Reductionism
I
- Imagining a Self-Organised Classroom
- Impact of Human Consciousness on Evolution
- Informational Complexity of the Innate Knowledge of Human Beings
- Integrated Information Theory
- Integration of Cosmic, Biological, and Social Evolution
- Integrative Complexity
- Integrative Levels of Reality
- Isotropic Nature of the Universe
J
M
N
P
R
S
- Second Law of Thermodynamics
- Second Order Cybernetics
- Self-Organizational Pedagogy
- Self-Organizing Universe
- Serial Endosymbiosis Theory
- Similarities Between All Types of Macro-Evolution
- Social Evolution
- Social Traps
- Socialist Cybernetics in Allende’s Chile
- Society as a Living Cognitive System
- Solving Society's Problems from the Bottom Up
- Solving the Global Crisis Requires the Approach of Economics Cybernetics
- Soviet Cybernetics and Planning
- Soviet Cybernetics and the Promise of Big Computer Socialism
- Stafford Beer on Cybernetics, Democracy and the Will of the People
- Stuart Kauffman on Going Beyond Reductionism and Towards Emergence
- Sustainability as Complexity without Growth
- Symbiotic Planet
- Systemic Complexity Thinking
T
- Technology, Cybernetic Revolutionaries and Politics in Allende's Chile
- Thermodynamic vs Teleodynamic View of the Evolution of the Universe
- Thomas Vander Wal on Granular Social Networks
- Three Big Bangs of Matter, Life and Mind
- Towards a History and Pre-History of Knowledge
- Towards a New Cybernetic Socialism
- Towards Mega- or Meta-Evolutionary Studies
- Trajectories of Social Evolution