The History of Complexity

I’m biased because I’ve always been a history nerd, but I believe that systems and complexity scientists must be in touch with their historical roots if these ambitious disciplines are to ever reach their full future potential.

So, I was happy to see that the Sante Fe Institute announced their collection of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science a few days ago.

“Foundational Papers in Complexity Science maps the development of complex-systems science through eighty-eight revolutionary works originally published between 1922 and 2000.” ¹

As I browsed the selection of papers included in the collection, I saw several classics that have influenced my thinking and many more that have been on my “to read” list for a while.

Here are three of my favorites which immediately stood out.

1. Friedrich Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945) describes the proper function of prices in a market — they are signals meant to (imperfectly! ) communicate information about consumer demand and the available supply of economic resources. Hayek emphasizes that the type of equilibrium analysis that mainstream economics (still…) depends on does provide utility, but doesn’t actually allow us to deal with social processes directly. Therefore it should be treated as “no more than a useful preliminary to the study of the main problem.” ²

2. Warren Weaver’s Science and Complexity (1948) makes a clear distinction between three types of problems faced by science. Simple problems which can be reduced to a few key variables and are adequately handled by basic mathematical frameworks and the traditional scientific method. Problems of disorganized complexity with billions of random variables can be tackled using probability theory and statistics. Problems of organized complexity, where there are many variables but the organization of the system is the defining characteristic, require new methods. Over 70 years later, we are still in the process of fully developing these new approaches.³

3. Herbert Simon’s The Architecture of Complexity (1962) argues that hierarchy is one of the essential features shared by all complex systems and that many hierarchical systems can be described as “nearly decomposable.” This means that their component subsystems have behavior that is essentially independent over short time spans, and only partially dependent on the behavior of the other components (in an aggregate fashion) over long time spans. ⁴

I’ll be picking up a copy of the collection to read this summer, and I’d encourage any readers curious about the history of complexity science to do so as well.

1. https://www.foundationalpapersincomplexityscience.org/

2. F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” (1945) https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-use-knowledge-society.pdf

3. W. Weaver, “Science and Complexity” (1948) https://fernandonogueiracosta.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/warren-weaver-science-and-complexity-1948.pdf

4. H. A. Simon, “The Architecture of Complexity” (1962) https://faculty.sites.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/archive/tesfatsi/ArchitectureOfComplexity.HSimon1962.pdf