(GWAVA: SPAM) What have the Romans - sorry - complexity done for us?

Posted by Günther Greindl-2 on Jul 25, 2006; 11:32am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/What-have-the-Romans-sorry-complexity-done-for-us-tp522232p522254.html

I agree absolutely, Robert, would have written the same
had you not beat me to it ;-)
I think "complexity" is not a science but a way to approach
problems.

Traditional science asks: what does my discipline have to say to
this and that?

"Complexity scientists" ask: we have a concrete phenomenon here, which
we can't explain. Let's look at it from all directions, on different
scaling levels, on different hierarchies of description. Let us apply
all current knowledge that is at our disposal and not limit ourselves
to the constraints of our discipline.

Complexity is a new Enlightenment, an Enlightenment for the scientific
community, encouraging everyone to adopt a broader view.

Regards,
G?nther

Robert Holmes wrote:

> Y'know Mike, I think you've hit on something here. I'm beginning to
> think that complexity is more a way of thinking than it is a field or
> academic discipline. And as such it makes as much sense talk about the
> field of complexity as it does to talk about the field of reductionism
> (and if someone says that it *does* make sense to talk of reductionism
> as a field, please identify the university that has a Department of
> Reductionism).
>
> So if complexity is "just" a way of thinking, is it useful? Absolutely,
> and for all the reasons that Mike points out. The cross-fertitlization
> it espouses gets us away from that terrible silo-ing to which experts
> and academic departments are prone. It take us back to an Enlightenment
> conception of the scientist when you could get to be a physicist and a
> mathematician and an alchemist and a medic and a..... etc etc.
>
> Robert
>
>
> On 7/24/06, *Michael Agar* <magar at anth.umd.edu
> <mailto:magar at anth.umd.edu>> wrote:
>
>     Well, there's the roads, yeah, and then there's the...
>
>     Romans are the right metaphor, since much of what's happened in the
>     last X years has been diffusion of ideas--ideas, not measures--into
>     numerous different domains. Like Kuhn said...
>
>     Mike
>
>
>     On Jul 24, 2006, at 7:21 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
>
>      > Hi all,
>      >
>      > I really enjoyed Joe's post and it set me thinking - exactly what
>      > has complexity science achieved? IMHO, one measure of a field's
>      > health is that the field moves forward (radical, huh?). If I look
>      > at particle physics, they now know stuff that they didn't 15 years
>      > ago (neutrino mass for example); if I look at high-temperature
>      > superconductivity, Tc moves ever upwards. If I look at string
>      > theory they ask (and occassionally answer) ever more abstruse and
>      > unlikely questions that might not bear any relation to the real
>      > world but are at least based on what was asked before.
>      >
>      > 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?
>      >
>      > Robert
>      > ============================================================
>      > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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>
>     ============================================================
>     FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>     Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>     lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org