Posted by
Pamela McCorduck on
Jul 24, 2006; 8:26pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-have-the-Romans-sorry-complexity-done-for-us-tp522232p522244.html
I've been following this thread with interest.
Skepticism is admirable and appropriate, but so, perhaps, is
patience. Complexity is--or aspires to be--a science, not a
technology (though it uses technology, of course) and science just
takes longer than technology to firm itself up. For example, the
human race has been working on physics since (or before) Archimedes.
It was a long time to Newton, and a further long time to Einstein,
and it ain't over yet for physics. I would myself be a little bit
skeptical of grand schemes to formalize complexity right now, though
some bright person or team might indeed find the magic bullet and
then I would have to give up my skepticism.
Meanwhile, the sciences of complexity offer a new point of view,
which, as has been observed, is worth 40 IQ points right there.
On Jul 24, 2006, at 1:47 PM, Robert Holmes wrote:
> I didn't form the question well - what I meant was: what can we do
> now that we couldn't do 15 years before as a direct consequence of
> advances in complexity science?
>
> Sure, the examples you give can be described as complex systems.
> But did any of those examples actually come out of university
> complexity science departments? Or were developed by people who
> identified themselves as complexity scientists? i.e. Were they the
> results of advances in the field complex science specifically? I'm
> pretty sure that the examples below were all appropriated by
> complexity science after the fact.
>
> R
>
> On 7/24/06, Carlos Gershenson < cgershen at vub.ac.be> wrote:
>> So here's the question: in the field of complexity science,
>> exactly what can we do now that we could not do 15 years ago?
>
> just some things... I'm sure I'm missing some important ones...
> (can't see what's everywhere)
>
> 1. complex networks
> 2. systems biology
> 3. synthetic life, i.e. protocells (well, not here yet, but give it
> another two years...)
> 4. Internet (well, it was just starting... say 20 years ago?)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carlos Gershenson...
> Centrum Leo Apostel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
> Krijgskundestraat 33. B-1160 Brussels, Belgium
>
http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~cgershen/>
> "Tendencies tend to change..."
>
>
>
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