Matt listed "complexity" as being one of the points of departure for this blog.
I'd like someone to elaborate!
I just watched this film "My Night at Maud's" by Eric Rohmer. Being a French Film from the sixties, they did a lot of talking about the human condition. Specifically they looked at catholicism and life, mostly in reference to Pascal. In the extras there was a philosopher and priest talking for twenty minutes about Pascal. A couple of interesting points which might work into this "complexity" idea:
1. That Pascal might have "discovered" differential calculus years before it officially emerged (I dont know the history here, or anything about Pascal), but he rejected Mathematics as not being pure enough to describe our existence before he could write about it, however in his writing and his work it was there so that somebody could act as "one looking over his shoulder" and discover it. The philosopher and the priest seemed to say that this was part of his genius, that he left clues for other people to discover (which they did--leibniz? supposedly used Pascal to come to differential calculus... again, excuse my crude understanding of the subject)-- Im troubled by that, and would like to think it is more just a representation of dialogue , emergent conciousness and the foundation and construction of knowledge, especially in times of revolution. (this was all mid 17th century through the 18th century)
2. Hinted at above, but there was the idea that was floated around through the conversation about man as liar. That Pascal wanted to change mankind to what it could be (love, peace, moral), but had to start at what it was (lying, selfish).
Again, COMPLEXITY?
Do any of us know anything about Pascal? Is he worth exploring? or is it a bit "French" and self important. I enjoyed watching people talk about it, but Im convinced I got more out of that than I probably would from reading his writing first hand.
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2 comments:
Hi,
I guess it was me who was throwing that term around, so I probably should respond - but I must admit
i have my own questions about what 'complexity' really refers to (I guess it's a pretty wide term...).
We can at least break it into wide' and 'narrow' interpretations:
Narrow:
'Complexity Theory' describes some important questions in computer science. There are (hypothetically) different classes of problems that can be solved by computers in
different amounts of (theoretical) time - a time that varies as a polynomial of the length of the problem ('P'class problems),
or a 'bigger' time ('NP' class problems).The answers to these unanswered questions could have interesting implications regarding the capacity for some important problems in mathematics to be solved by computers. I'm sure the Wikipedia entry about complexity theory in regards to computers is much more informative though.
I'm more interested in the 'wide' scope on complexity (which of course has it's own 'narrow' investigative domains). To me, 'complexity' is a term that we
might use to denote the humbling realisation that even our best, most rigorous and most rigorously
tested and successful models of the universe break down (become mathematically unsolvable, or computationally absurd) as soon as the system considered is more than an extremely stripped down and simplified array of objects
and interactions (this is of course not entirely true, e.g there are things like statistical mechanics and other probability-based theories which transcend this problem, but this is another story). Complexity signals that rise of an acknowledgement of interconnectness that lead to domains of knowledge like ecology, systems theory and
mathematical chaos theory.
Human groups are classic 'complex' phenomena, as there are many interacting agents, and relations between them may be continuously changing, and you also have
the effects of different types of network structure (something that i'm talking to people in behav. sci. at uni about).
Complexity also enters into debates about the nature of consciousness - some posit that consciousness 'emerges' at some point where the flow of information becomes dense (complex) enough (i.e. in the context of a network of neurons). Extrapolations of this argument lead to interesting hypotheses about internets, global brains and higher consciousnesses. Much we could potentially go into here.
The interesting thing is that while 'unpredictability' is a hallmark characteristic of a complex system,
complex systems also have their regularities, structures, stable points and thus some sort of predictable-ness.
I think the wide perspective on the wide interpretation is an interesting starting point in questions around what we think philosophy, science and social science can actually be expected to achieve, and knock on
questions about how we can be expected to govern our
societies in a 'rational' fashion in the face of the challenges of complexity.
The narrow questions within the wide interpretation are technical questions around modelling and simulating complex phenomena, trying to nail down in some way the evolutionary dynamics of various types of complex systems, and classifying such systems.
I hope this is a good start, would love to hear some perspectives from others-
(Matt? information and complexity?)
(Aaron? relationship of knowledge, predictability and government/learning)
Again, I feel much less verbally eloquent, but perhaps in regards to all this, and what you asked me specifically "the relationship of knowledge and predictability with government and learning" I think with what youve explained (especially the idea of where conciousness emerges), a theory of learning such as the Social Constructivist can be seen in an interesting new light. Where Vygotsky talked about learning being the development of social tools (verbal and numerical language, cultural capital) and the important of social tools being our ability to communicate, I wonder if my goal as a Social Constructivist is to help form a more coherent "conciousness" out of the complex arrangement of social networks-- this especially seems to make sense when I consider diversity as an ingredient towards a more suitable model.
I guess looking at complexity is something that the current models of learning (especially in regards to schooling) completely fails to look at. We teach and subject ourselves to learning often with the idea that there is an answer and the matrix will be revealed, when (I would argue) there isnt an answer and the matrix cannot be revealed.
A Personal aside, this is where I return to ideas of faith and community.
I see faith as somehow being the bridge between the amibguity of knowledge, at a simple level the recognition of not knowing and the continual striving to know. Community, In regards to how I believe we do learn, and how we should encourage and facilitate learning, Other people are at once the reason and the only means-- so the best we can do for our learning is to subsidize diverse and networked communities.
I never feel like I express much in writing so much. I wish we could have these conversations in koans, poetry and proverbial phrases.
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