antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:14 am on December 28, 2021

What complexity science is, and why

This is a post/essay about understanding complexity science, via some peculiarities of the field, as a meeting place for a special kind of scientist. It is the result of my nostalgia-driven hobby of reading popular-science complex systems books, and builds on notes that have been collecting dust for almost a decade.

Definitions and disclaimers

A striking feature of complexity science is the effort books and articles spend on defining the discipline itself, or complex systems (its study objects) [1]. These definitions often come with disclaimers declaring themselves incomplete [2], inconsistent with other definitions [3], etc. In other words, claiming not to be the final word on the matter and preparing the readers for more definitions to come. But, the more definitions I read, the less well-founded the disclaimers seem. For the purpose of defining a scientific discipline, they are not only consistent [4], but they also stand the test of…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:24 am on December 28, 2021

My comment:
I’m not going to spend more than this sentence on my boring preoccupation that one of the challenges for complexity science is its understanding of itself as ‘new’ and ‘different’ in contrast to the long, continuing, and more-or-less completely overlapping cybernetics and systems thinking.

I came here to suggest that it’s a hallmark of trans-disciplinary (or, I perhaps prefer, metadisciplinary) spaces that, due to their very indefinability in terms that suit the existing disciplines, they will be slightly obsessed with self-defining or, at least, self-mapping. You refer to this above and it’s fascinating to see the same thing in the developing (and relating) ‘groups’ or ‘fields’ or ‘loosely-associated sets of thinking’ of liminal/postrat/metarat/emerging/sensemaking/metamodernism…

(My tracking of the mapping:
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/12/10/mapping-for-emergence-emerge/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/11/18/the-liminal-web-mapping-an-emergent-subculture-of-sensemakers-meta-theorists-systems-poets-joe-lightfoot/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2020/10/08/who-are-our-fellow-travellers/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/01/07/systems-cybernetics-complexity-sensemaking-and-fellow-traveller-podcasts/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/09/15/the-sensemaking-web-braindump-google-docs/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/10/08/lisa-mcnulty-postrat-reading-list-zotero/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/05/17/lisa-mcnulty-on-twitter-does-postrat-twitter-have-a-reading-list-twitter/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2021/08/10/metamodernism-sensemaking-philosophy-milleplateaux/
https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/12/28/a-curriculum-for-meta-rationality-what-they-dont-teach-you-at-stem-school-meaningness-and-some-summary-posts-on-david-chapmans-ideas/
)
facilitationguru 9:24 am on December 31, 2021

Thanks.

It’s complicated. You stated it already in your first sentence: “peculiarities of the field, as a meeting place for a special kind of scientist”

Summary
Complexity is not an attribute of reality; complexity is an attribute of scientifical thinking. In science one creates models – or metaphors – to understand reality by using these metaphors (or models).

In doing so one structures one’s perceptions, attributing them to one’s observations (or ‘field’) – first distinction -, one’s judgements (in your words ‘peculiarities’) about these perceptions – second distinction – and one’s perceptions as being perceived by other scientists (‘a meeting place for a special kind’ – judgement again – of scientist) – third distinction.

One distinguishes one-self by distinguishing distinctions, distinct from other distinguishers (= scientists in other sciences) while both being undistinguished (agreeing) within one’s peer group and distinguished (recognizing) by peers. So, technically, one knows one has one’s cake, eats it and belongs to known cake-eaters. And, like by Alice, eating one’s cake makes one bigger.

Talking about complexity as a science just adds a layer on top of complicated complications. It’s all about structuring structures. In the end, one doesn’t know what one doesn’t know,

The structure of science
The map is not the territory; but the structure of the map accounts for its usefulness (free after Korzybski, (mark the “;”)). Also, the science is not the discipline (the word one uses for ‘territory’ in science); but the structure (of science) accounts for its usefulness. This is why (so called beta-) sciences like mathematics, physics, chemistry, … “work”. They’re useful because of their structure. Disclaimer: usefulness should not be confused with truth. One useful concept – like “particle” might conflict with another one – like “wave”.

Why this has to be so? Because of the so called “structural coupling”: all so called “systems” are “operationally closed”. They make “themselves” into what I like to call “eigenforms”. Or to formulate differently: one induces these systems or sciences to “become” “self-referential”. One constructs mental constructs (models), constructed (modelling) to be similar with observed behaviour of observables. Thus one’s models become similar with themselves: one observes one’s models, observing (implying here keeping, minding (!)) models to model observations. Coupling happens organically and “automatically”.

It seems, looks like, the sciences are both “discovered” – self-induced – and “invented” – self-produced. As human being one also has shaped one self a self-modelling model, who’s (body and mental) structure accounts for it’s usefulness. ( self shaping = Eigenform, from the German (and Dutch) Eigen or Self and Formen (vormen) shaping) In co-developing, or co-evolving – “systems” become both distinct from each other, self-referential and “operationally closed”. Like any map or model, the structure account for their usefulness. (Like one uses a model in modelling mode.)

The structure of discipline
One more step for human kind: the discipline is not the science, but the structure of the discipline accounts for its usefulness. So members of a science use their structure to keep discipline among their members (and keep their members). You may have noticed that every scientific discipline uses the same structure: student – bachelor – master – doctor – professor (and guru, mahaguru, … ) . Members through membership discipline each other. Of course, being “operationally closed”, one operates operations to both structure (discipline) and contain (Discipline) one’s science. That the former is subjective is being covered up.

As one uses these structures one “defines” one’s group (discipline) at the cost of social inequality. Using Bateson (I’ll look up the reference): any group (discipline) will create a double bind – both student and professor need each other to (re-)define each other. One could see this as an “Addiction Loop”. Like we say in Dutch: :”the teetotaller is right, but only the addict knows why”. I like to call this the Groucho Marx paradox: “I don’t want to have membership of a group that offers me a membership”. (It does explain to me, why the AA calls itself “anonymous”).

Structurally tensions
Still using Bateson, these internal tensions between members tend NOT to be addressed with each other, and are projected or exported on other groups. Members see the coherence of them as a group as being defined by resisting (fighting) others in other groups. The perceived pressure to keep discipline, leads to stagnating internally.

Members in groups move between cooperating – centralizing – and escalating – diversifying -, between heresy and schism. The sure sign of our inability to resolve these tensions with each other, is the search for leadership (fight/flight – dependency – pairing as Bion – Experiences in Groups – suggests). Which “sees” no other option then to “maintain order”, ordering order!

This changes the structuring of the members in the group. The structure based on (functional) merit and ability of members changes into a hierarchical structure of functions, ordering “positions”. Some members might become self-serving themselves.

We mostly use our languages in a command-and-control fashion then one can use language in distinguishing between groups. Of course, then the usefulness of an idea has to become a truth, a true idea. The “disclaimers”, claimed by the original inventors of an idea -this is why one mentions their names – are dismissed, because true idea can not be disclaimed. The ideas become dogma by dogmatics, claiming the truth of the ideas as specified by the “founders” or “elders”.

One also uses language to distinguish between membership of groups. As one “talks the talk” (another)one* assumes one also “walks the walk”. Language can be used to establish and maintain an (internal) hierarchy. Common people get divided by a common language. And in science, every jargon becomes a conspiracy against the laymen (I think it’s from Oscar Wilde). So when one knows the right words, (another)one* assumes one is “one”.

—
Laws of Form
In defining one distinguishes (= makes a distinction) and tacitly (or implicitly) distinguishes oneself, the one making a distinction. One sometimes calls a scientist, “a distinguished scientist”. So any scientist both distinguishes (“calls”) his or her so-called “field” and thereby “calls” her or himself. You may note the re-entry, as distinguished by Spencer-Brown. This – in my opinion – is why one both defines one discipline and uses disclaimers.

It’s the re-entry that’s bothering us, as one defines both one’s discipline as well as one’s community-of-practitioners. Now a carpenter and the field of carpentry can be distinguished by the actual products being produced (chairs, tables, a stairway,… ) . The guild of carpenters – the field – distinguish their members by a “master test” (I’ve been told making a stairway is a master test). It usually involves the apprentice carpenter joining parts together (so called “dovetail joint”) to join the carpentry.

In science, a scientist is being “promoted” – distinguished, marked – to their field by tests, exams, thesis and dissertation (in itself a funny word, combining splitting (“dis-“, as in distinctions) with joining (*ser- https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=disseratation. By splitting, one joins, reentry again). In joining, one tacitly subscribed to the rules and regulations of what’s now being called a discipline: discipline maintaining coherence.

Unlike carpentry – or any other physical field -, were one can observe the end product – a chair – , a community of scientists define their own field subjectively through their language. Becoming the all ready mentioned master by being examined on using the right language correctly. Being educated as an experimental physicist, I will exclude physics :-). Not. The proper use of words define their meaning AND the user, as distinguished from other user*s. A clear example of a re-entry.

One can make a scientific statement while being outside the science, but as a scientist, one should not make a statement outside one’s science. Or one creates a paradigm shift. This, in my opinion, is another meaning of the phrase, “Surely, you’re joking Mr Feynman!”. No serious scientist will make a joke.

At the same time, any scientific statement is “embedded” in the unscientifical. Like a “marked state” requires an “unmarked”, which, re-markedly, has no marks. The “unmarked” has to be necessarily “unknown”. Unmarked territory – terra incognito, the white on the map – has no qualities, nor attributes.

Making a (re)mark is an operation within an unknown and unknowable (!) context. At the same time, one has been told that “the context defines the meaning of the mark”. The scientific community – the discipline, the self-regulating regulators – “creates” a context for a mark being marked. So “subjecting” members to a field (of science) induces objective observations (or science), while suppressing the subjective – or “unknowable” – parts.

A discipline “marks” a field – physics, chemistry, …. – within the “unknown” and a scientist marks himself within the field of the discipline. A double re-entry.

As the system of marks used “prove” their usefulness, usefulness becomes the mark of marks. The structure of the marks accounts for their usefulness. As Feynman has said: ““Shut up and calculate”. Don’t ask what the symbols symbolize.

This only becomes a problem, if – and only when – one confuses usefulness – of concepts – with truth – of ideas. As Niels Bohr has remarked: “The opposite of a fact is falsehood. The opposite of an absolute truth may very well be another profound truth.”. Please mark the use of the word “fact”: every fact is being made and being made by someone (to paraphrase Maturana and Varela).

Mathematics, I once remarked to a dear mathematical friend, is not about truth, but about beauty.

—

Complexity science – as a transdisciplinary discipline – seems to me a mirage. Or just manifesting a manifestation of what one already knows: “I don’t know, it’s complex”.
- antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:52 am on December 31, 2021
  
  Your response it, I think to Petter – you might like to copy it to https://petterhol.me/2021/12/27/what-complexity-science-is/ ?