Re: Question on *complexity* theory.

Ken Richard Wrote:

<Doesn't complexity for the most part generally mean nothing more than taking into account information that isn't native to one's personal belief system? Isn't complexity for the most part just a broadening of scope and perspective? I know that it isn't the easiest task in the world for many and perhaps most but isn't that pretty much what all that we're talking about when we mention *complexity*?>

I think that’s part of what complexity entails. But consider also that complexity/chaos/whole systems reaches beyond this definition. Part of the craziness of what we see in the phenomena of the world – via human society/history & nature – is because we aren’t seeing the whole picture of things. We may have a skewed, inaccurate vision of our universe’s laws. But even if we were to somehow achieve a more complete accurate understanding of the cosmos and its operations, we’d still fall short.

Nature – for this reason or that – would still elude us and elude our attempt to intellectually ‘box in’ its principles (& rewrite/harness them for our own uses the way we do with the phenomena/dynamics of electricity, for instance).

Part of the problem is in our conceptualization of physical/natural dynamics. Part of the problem is in the intricacy, nuance of material and human systems themselves –> structures and operations in our universe are typified by detail, synergy, and an ocean of elemental and sub/systemic linkages in between; all of these create a tapestry of variation which we can’t always wrap our minds around very well. And, third, a big – if not an ultimate - part of the problem for why complexity exists, is that nature is fundamentally mysterious and paradoxical (along with being multidimensional, many-leveled).

It’s not even just that the sheer immensity and depth of the universe (plus our human world in its environmental context upon our earth) complicates our understanding; the nature of the cosmos itself, our human ecology, and our world history is organized in such a way that it eludes that selfsame understanding -> its nature is “other,” its capacitance is enormous (able to contain elements w/I its parameters that we might consider to be contradictory), and its fundamental law seems to be the trump card it holds against us (in the form of natural paradox and the ability to, at a base level (of analysis, ontology, and phenomena), not to be (easily or ever) pinned down.

Bringing the discussion back to world-systems; complexity is the source principle by which we move beyond the “mechanistic”, in our sociology and economics, to the level of “dynamics.”

Luke Rondinaro, Group Facilitator, The Consilience Projects

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