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Complexity: the Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

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Complexity: the Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos s* 4S s *G s & s a &* &* s €6 *s *6 * ; * € ry * s €i & *I I #* * s *i* s tr s* * *4 # & & # * * r& s & *R s * * # s # & s* s # *& * s & *s *'a + *s s w R *6 & m s s *s q *& & s *s * s \ M. Mitchell Wafdrop A TOUCHSTONEBOOK pueusnro sySrA4oN * Scnusrrn NewYonr LoNooN TonoNro SvonevToxyo SrNcnponr 7K TOUCHSTONE Simon & SchusterBuilding RockefdllerCenter 1230Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020 Copyright @ l99Z by M. Mitchell Waldrop All rights reserved including the right of reprod-uction in whole or in Part in anYtorm' First TouchstoneEdition l99l TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registeredhademarks o[ Simon & SchusterInc' DesignedbY Deirdre C' Amthor Manufactur-edIn the United Statesof America )579108642 Data Library' of CongressCataloging-in-Publication W.ldtoP, M. Mitchell' Complexity:the emergingscience at thg edgeof order and chaos/ M. Mitchell waldroP' p. cm' Includesbibliographical references and index' - l. Sctce-Philosiphv. 2. Complexi$ (Philosophv) I. Title. Q17t.w2581992 501-dc20 92-28757 CIP ISBN:0-671-76789-5 ISBN:0-671-87214-6 (PBK) To A. E. F. Contents VsroNsoF THEWHors 9 l. The lrish Ideaof a Hero l5 2. The Revolt of the Old Turks I A >L 3. Secretsof theold one Kd,fitn rn 99 4. "YouGuys Really BelieveThat?" Arlbna 136 5. Masterof theGame ttll*l t44 6. Lifeat theEdge of Chaos L*4"" 198 7. PeasantsUnder Glass rifh;, ltJl^rl 241 8. Waitingfor Carnot l(rr$-o, 27:. 9. Work in Progress 324 BBr,rocnapHy 360 AcruowLnncuenrs 36' INpnx 367 i Visionsof the Whole This is a book aboutthe scienceof eomplexity-a subiectthat's still so new and so wide-rangingthat nobodyknows quite how to defineit, or even whereits boundarieslie. But then,that's the wholepoint. If the field seems poorlydefined at the moment,it's becausecomplexity research is trying to grapplewith questionsthat defy all the conventionalcategories' For ex- ample: . Why did the SovietUnion's forg-yearhegemony over eastern Europe collapsewithin a few monthsin 1989?And why did the SovietUnion itselfcome apart less that two yearslater? Why wasthe collapseof com- munismso fastand so complete?It surelyhad something to do with two men namedGorbachev and Yeltsin. And yet eventhey seemedto k sweptup in eventsthat werefar beyondtheir control.Was theresome globaldynamic at work that hanscendsindividual personalities? . Why did thestock market crash more than 500points on a singleMonday in October1987? A lot of the blamegoes to computerizedtrading. But the computershad beenaround for years.ls thereany reasonwhy the crashcame on that particularMonday? . Why do ancientspecies and ecosystemsoften remain stable in the fossil recordfor millions of years-and then eitherdie out or transformthem- selvesinto somethingnew in a geologicalinstant? Perhaps the dinosaurs gotwiped out by an asteroidimpact. But thereweren't that manyasteroids. What elsewas going on? . Why do rural familiesin a nationsuch as Bangladeshstill producean 10 COMPLEX'TY averageof sevenchildren apiece, even when birth control is made freely availflle-and even when the villagersseem perfectly well awareof how they're being hurt by the country's immense overpopulationand stagnant development?Why do they continue in a course of behavior that's so obviouslydisastrous? . How did a primordial soup of amino acidsand other simple molecules manageto turn itself into the first living cell some four billion yearsago? There;sno way the moleculescould haveiust fallen togetherat random; asthe creationistsare fond ofpointing out, the oddsagainst that happening are ludicrous. So was the creationof life a miracle?or wasthere some- thing elsegoing on in that primordialsoup that we still don't understand? . wht did individual cells begin to form alliancessome 600 million years ago, therebygiving rise to multicellular organismssuch as seaweed,iel- lyfish, insects,and eventuallyhumans? For that matter,why do humans s end so much time and effort organizingthemselves into families, tribes, communities, nations, and societiesof all types?If evolution (or free- market capitalism) is really iust a matter of the survival of the fiftest, then why should it ever produce anything other than ruthless competition among individuals? In a world where nice guys all too often 6nish last, why should there be any such thing as trust or cooperation?And why, in spiteofeverything, do trustand cooperationnot only existbut flourish? . How can Darwinian natural selectionaccount for such wonderfully in- tricate structures as the eye or the kidney? Is the incredibly precise or- ganization that we find in living creaturesreally iust the result of random evolutionary accidents?Or has something more been going on for the pastfour billion years,something that Darwin didn't know about? . What is life, anyrvay?Is it nothing more than a particularly complicated kind of carbon chemistry?or is it something more subtle?And what are we to make of creations such as computer viruses?Are they iust pesky imitationsof life-or in somefundamental sense are they really alive? . What is a mind? How doesa three-poundlump of ordinarymatter, the brain, give rise to such ineffable qualities as feeling, thought, PurPose' and awareness? . And perhapsmost fundamentally,why is there somethingrather than nothing? The universe startedout from the formless miasma of the Big Bang. l,nd ever since then it's been governedby an inexorabletendency towa"rddisorder, dissolution, and decay, as describedby the second law of thermodynamics.Yet the universehas also managedto bring forth structureon everyscale: galaxies, stars, planets, bacteria, plants, animals, and brains. How? Is the cosmiccompulsion for disordermatched by an Visionsof the Whole fi equally powerful compulsion for order, structure, and organization?And ifso, how can both processesbe going on at once? At first glance, about the only thing that thesequestions have in common is that they all have the same answer: "Nobody knows." Some of them don't even seemlike scientific issuesat all. And yet, when you look a little closer, they actually have quite a lot in common. For example, every one of these questions refers to a systemthat is complex, in the sensethat a great many independent agentsare interacting with each other in a great manyways. Think of the quadrillionsof chemicallyreacting proteins, lipids, and nucleicacids that makeup a living cell, or the billionsof interconnected neuronsthat make up the brain, or the millions of mutually interdependent individualswho make up a human society. In every case,moreover, the very richnessof theseinteractions allows the system as a whole to undergo sfontaneousself-organization. Thus, people trying to satisfytheir material needsunconsciously organize them- selvesinto an economythrough myriad individual actsof buying and selling; it happenswithout anyone being in chargeor consciouslyplanning it. The genesin a developing embryo organize themselvesin one way to make a liver cell and in anotherway to makea musclecell. Flying birdsadapt to the actionsof their neighbors,unconsciously organizing themselves into a flock. organisms constantlyadapt to each other through evolution, thereby organizing themselvesinto an exquisitely tuned ecosystem.Atoms search for a minimum energy stateby forming chemical bonds with each other, thereby organizingthemselvesinto structuresknown asmolecules. In every case'groups of agentsseeking mutual accommodationand self-consistency somehow manage to transcendthemselves, acquiring collective properties such as life, thought, and purpose that they might never have possessed individually. Furthermore, these complex, self-organizingsystems are adaptite, in that they don't just passivelyrespond to eventsthe way a rock might rolr around in an earthquake. They actively try to turn whateverhappens to their advantage.Thus, the human brain constantlyorganizes ,ndi.org"- nizes its billions of neural connectionsso as to learn from experience (sometimes,anyway). Species evolve for bettersurvival in a chaniing en- vironment-and so do corporationsand indushies. And the marketplace respondsto changingtastes and lifestyles,immigration, technologicalde- velopments,shifts in the price of raw materials,and a hostof othei factors. Finally, every one of thesecomplex, self-organizing,adaptive systems possessesa kind of dynamism that makesthem qualitatively different from 12 COMPLEXITY staticobiects such as computerchips or snowflakes,whichare merely complicated. Complex systemsare more spontaneous,more disorderly, more alive than that. At the sametime, however,their peculiar dynamism is also a far cry from the weirdly unpredictablegyrations known as chaos. In the past two decades,chaos theory has shakenscience to its foundations with the realizationthat very simple dynamicalrules can give rise to ex- traordinarily intricate behavior; witness the endlesslydetailed beauty of ftactals,or the foaming turbulence of a river. And yet chaosby itself doesn't explain the structure,the coherence,the self-organizingcohesiveness of complex systems. Instead, all thesecomplex systemshave somehowacquired the ability to bring order and chaosinto a specialkind ofbalance.This balancepoint- often called the edge of chaos-is were the components of a system never quite lock into place,and yet neverquite dissolveinto turbulence,either. ihe edge of chaos is where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativityto deservethe name of life. The edgeof chaosis where n.* id.r, and innovative genogpesare forever nibbling awayat the edges of the status quo, and where even the most entrenched old
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