| Yuri
Tarnopolsky
eSSAYS
17. On Complexity complexity. unified picture of the world. Ulf Grenander. pattern theory. |
Essay 17. On Complexity
Sciences on one side and humanities on the other seem to be separated by a cultural chasm that became obvious to C. P. Snow in 1959. There was no such sharp divide in times of Lucretius (94?-55? BC), Aristotle (384-322 BC) , St. Isidore of Seville (560-636; he is Patron Saint of: computers, computer users, computer programmers, and Internet), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and, actually, up to the times of C.P. Snow. The scientists in the beginning of the twentieth century were men and women of general humanitarian culture, with interests in arts and humanities, and Albert Einstein is a popular example. Some familiarity with science was also a part of general culture. Science was an aspect of human curiosity and creativity and technology had just started its Cambrian Explosion: dramatic diversification of types of products.
The change
around 1960 was, probably, a result of the new role of science and
technology
and the divergence of the life of Things from the life of humans (see Essay
4, On New Overcoats). Science and technology smoothly
wriggled
out of the shell of general culture as a separate second culture
because
of:
r
increased competition for human time (see Essay
2, On the Chronophages or
In my
opinion, the divide between sciences and humanities is not absolute.
The
shared human language unites the two cultures like the language of
genetic
code unites all living forms.
The vocabulary of sciences and humanities spreads from narrow and highly special terms of natural sciences, like tensor, mitochondria, and quark, to the words of strictly humanitarian usage, like guilt and hubris (they might be appropriated by physics in the future). At some historical
point,
a word of the common language (for example, charge, decay,
resistance)
was selected as a scientific term, usually, for the reason of analogy.
Other scientific terms were originally invented for internal use, but
later
infiltrated humanities and common language (entropy, diffusion,
algorithm)
for the same reason. Latin and Greek roots went both ways,
retaining
their general meaning. Thus, the Latin posse (have power),
gave potential,
power, possibility, and impotence).
I believe
that if there is a substance of the unified knowledge, it is analogy
and
metaphor. I believe that at a certain level of abstraction, a large
picture
of the world can appear. We cannot see it by using narrow terms.
Accordingly,
if we use either wide and vague or exact but very abstract terms, we
cannot
see the details of the picture. It is a tradeoff. We are not trained to
see the whole because our education and division of mental labor
reflects
the historic evolution of knowledge with its diversification and
specialization
into philosophy, literature, physics, biology, and thousands of narrow
parcels.
Human nature, living nature, and physical nature are separated only in our mind. For an observer from Mars, they both are the Nature of the Earth, but only because of a big distance. Charge, energy, power, speed, acceleration, resistance, competition, even culture (microbiology and anthropology), strange and charmed (quarks), together with scores of other words, are in common use by both sciences and humanities. Although theoretical physics tends to break with analogy, even the color of quarks is not just a nostalgic artifact of sensual perception but a meaningful analogy with the three basic colors.
The unified picture of the world is in the state of a permanent growth,
like a regenerating tissue covering the lesion. To watch pieces of this
jigsaw picture join and fuse has been my major single passion.
Strangely,
the picture has been getting only simpler with time. But you can never
make money on anything simple except aspirin, and the unipicturalists
will
crouch somewhere below the English Major.
It seems that the complexity of modern life is as oppressive as a humid hot July day in a big city. Simple living becomes a dream, but a related Web site looks like a window into complexity. Regulations, laws, rules, tax code, OSHA and EPA requirements, paperwork, documentation, bureaucracy, special interests, political correctness, politics, economy, technology, computers, programming, education, science, air transportation, parking space, ethnic fragmentation, ethnic sensitivity, world community, international relations, police activity, globalization, dealing with protesters, Arab-Israeli conflict, ethics of medical research, spread of AIDS, religious influence on secular life, and countless other issues are components of modern complexity.
Fortunately,
the growth of complexity is partially offset by its loss. Thus, the
relations
between people seem to drift toward simplification. The loss of
loyalty,
for example, takes a good deal of complexity load off our shoulders.
The
topic of the loss, however, better suits a separate essay (see Essay
34. On Loss).
We can
certainly solve all the problems, except finding parking space, by
having
a czar with full power for every problem that cannot be solved by a
town
meeting. We would simply overturn any czar who acts against
majority.
Social complexity, therefore, displays between the simplicity of
absolute dictatorship and an ultimate democracy.
What
is complexity? What is more complex and what is less so? How to measure
it?
The subject
turns out to be very complex. Complexity today means:
r a
particular science about large dynamic systems, strongly
impregnated
by
mathematics,
r difficulty
of understanding (i.e., amount of work needed for
understanding,
which is not
as shallow as might seem)
r the static
property of being complex, often, in a very narrow aspect, like
complexity
of calculations and computer programs, but also in a wide view, like
complexity
of a civilization..
A host
of definitions can be found and to review the subject would take a
book.
I will limit myself to referring to Murray
Gell-Mann, John
Horgan, and Chris
U. M. Smith. None of the sources on the Web or otherwise
seems
satisfying to me as far as the big picture is concerned.
On the next page I am going to present my understanding of what
complexity
is by playing with a set of nine Lego-like blocks that can be connected
in various ways.
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