Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems

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Summary: Science is not pop music ...and philosophy didn't used to be
Review: ... in spite of the appearance of the reviews associated with this work and the work itself, there is a valid connection between postmodernism and (let me be patient!) complexity.

First of all, about terminology... isn't complexity theory a branch of computer science that deals with execution time as a metric of algorithms? I think the reviewers here want to refer to complex systems theory. Wasn't connectionism a fad which was piled on top of a catchily-conceived name for artificial neural networks .... which were the popularization of more serious works of people like Papert, Minsky, Grossberg...and doesn't the reviewer who pretends to know something about physical science understand what "irreversibility" is and that, indeed, classical mechanics is indeed reversible? J. Willard Gibbs would roll over in his grave if he could read the reviews on this page...

IF you are seriously trying to find out what this stuff is about, start out by getting Lars Skyttner's book on General Systems Theory. Use it as a guidebook. Then, if you want to understand the evolution of the ideas, read the opening sections of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. After that, read Saussure and Piaget on structuralism and read Terence Hawkes' book, "Structuralism and Semiotics" After that, try to get at least a rudimentary understanding of the work of the process philosophers...Bergson, Peirce, James and, of course, "Process and Reality" by Whitehead. At this point, you should seriously consider getting at least a passing familiarity with the work of Karl Marx with the goal of understanding what was really bothering him - and of seeing that Marx's ideas are important in ways that he probably never even thought about.

At that point, if you are one of many for whom there is a schism between the culture of liberal arts and the culture of mathematics and science, you should, at this point read a few of the popular works of Richard Feynman - perhaps, "The Character of Physical Law" or the opening lecture of Volume I of "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Compare what Feynman has to say about science to what Piaget has to say about structures and - hopefully, by now you are beginning to realize that mathematics is a liberal art - and that the so-called liberal arts are sometimes excuses for people who don't want to be very careful in their thinking....(not always, mind you) - go and read Sunny Auyang's wonderful books, "Foundations of Complex Systems Theories" and "How is Quantum Field Theory Possible?"

By this point, you should feel somewhat secure in addressing "Postmodernism" and being able to distinguish what is there because people want to sound "cool" for their friends, and what is valid and sometimes deeply disturbing for the evolution of humanity.

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Summary: Good but very challenging reading
Review: As a professional engineer with a strong interest in postmodern philosophy I identify closely with the author and I am very amazed at how he could relate the extremely abstract concepts of post-structuralism with the more concrete example of neural networks. His unmasking of the metaphysics of representation that underlies current research in artificial intelligence was a great insight for me. At only 142 pages, this book seemed very inviting and thus I bought it. But don't be misled, what this book lacks in length is more than made up by its density. For me, who prior to this had only read introductory books on postmodernism and had only vague notions about connectionism and neural networks, it turned out to be extremely challenging and demanding to read, and completing it gave me a sense of achievement similar to being done with a hard project. I think some parts were unnecessarily abstract, which, knowing the author's talent for making analogies and examples, felt like a disappointment. Other parts, such as his comments on postmodern ethics, simply begged for further elaboration or at least to references on the works of others in this field. I think I will return to this book once I read more on Derrida and Lyotard for a better understanding. I really hope that by then the author will have come out with a sequel to this very interesting and groundbreaking line of work.

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Summary: Complexity and Philosophy
Review: Because they are structures of relationships and patterns, non-linear, dynamically self-organizing processes such as those described by Stuart Kauffman and Ilya Prigogine are characterized by distributed control and non-linear feedback, adapting and complexifying in response to interaction with their environment. Unlike Newtonian processes, self-organizing structures are essentially historical and contextual. More importantly, such complex dynamical systems are describable only at the holistic level, in terms of their higher-order relationships and patterns. For all these reasons, they are not reducible to the sum of their component parts.

Cilliers argues brilliantly that the existence and importance of complex systems suggest that Derrida and Lyotard's post-structuralism "is not merely a subversive form of discourse analysis but a style of thinking that is sensitive to the complexity of the phenomena under consideration." If human beings and their societies exhibit dynamics homologous to those of complex biological and chemical processes, postmodernism's rejection of all metanarratives --including ethical metaprescriptions -- is simply an echo of Prigogine's phrase, "Nature is too rich to be described in a single language." However, Cilliers points out, "the fact that there are manay narrative paths... doesnot imply that anything goes. All narratives are subject to some form of constraint, and some paths are ruled out" by the historical and contextual framework which they describe. Knowledge and ethics are always local and tentative.

When read in conjunction with Andy Clark's Being There, and Dynamics in Action, by Alicia Juarrero,a new conceptual philosophical framework based on complexity theory seems to be in the making! An exciting and revolutionary triad!

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Summary: A modernist approach to Complexity
Review: Cilliers has undertaken an important job - exploring the linkage between complexity thinking and postmodernism. He has made excellent use of some main writers on postmodernism and shown some important relation to studies of representation and self-organizing systems. He works hard to help us escape the locked-in positions of positivistic and foundationalist science, but his major conceptual base in connectionism displays an unabashed modernist view. While connectionism is an important tool in exploring the ideas about how the mind/brain works, it ignores other important ideas arising from the work of Maturana/Varela and Niklas Luhmann on auto-poiesis and John Holland on complex adaptive systems. More significantly, Cilliers is locked into the ideas of networks. It is a valuable tool for the technological advances, but for a full philosophical exploration he undertakes, we needs also to look at field thinking, particularly that arising in quantum fields discussion such as in Sunny Auyang' work.

What I find most difficult in Cillier's retention of the modernist view of competition. Our cultures may be agonistic but is competition fundamental to the development of human life?

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Summary: Science is not pop music ...and philosophy didn't used to be
Review: Frankly, I'm astonished by some of the favorable reviews this book has received. First of all, I still haven't figured out if this really is a book or if it's a collection of essays, due to the amount of repetition of content between chapters.

Cilliers attempts to demonstrate the mutual relevance of complexity science (CS) and postmodern philosophy, but his knowledge of CS and thermodynamics seems to go no deeper than what he's read on the dustjackets of pop-sci books. The number of claims he makes that are either blatantly false or not necessarily true are outnumbered only by the number of uninsightful comments and statements that appear to have been gleaned directly from more technical sources. Here are a few to make one's skin crawl:

On p. 6, as an example of a non-linear relationship: "money can receive compounded interest". In fact, this is a classic *linear* relationship (so common it's often used as an introductory problem the first day of a course in linear differential equations). The equation representing it is simply: dM/dt = n*M, where M is the amount of money in an account, and n is the interest rate. The solution is Mo * e^(nt), where Mo is the initial amount of money in the account and 'e' represents 'exponential'. (Simply because compounded interest generates an exponential curve over time does not make the relationship non-linear; the underlying equation is linear.)

On p. 4: "Any analysis of a complex system that ignores the dimension of time is incomplete, or at most a synchronic snapshot of a diachronic process." This is completely false - One of the very purposes of 'phase space' analysis is to *completely* represent a system without considering time. The elliptical relationship between velocity and momentum in a simple harmonic oscillator is a common example that many might remember from high school physics.

On p. 8: "In classical mechanics, time was reversible, and therefore not part of the equation. In thermodynamics time plays a vital role." This quote still makes me tear at my hair. The *exact opposite* is true: almost every equation in classical mechanics (projectile motion, harmonic oscillation, planetary motion) explicitly involve time as a dimension, while, because thermodynamics is only concerned with initial and final (equilibrium) states, few thermo equations do so.

On p. 3, Cilliers says: "The grains of sand on a beach do not interest us as a complex system." but includes later in the book a quote from complexity scientist Per Bak, who has achieved his fame specifically for the study of the 'self-organized criticality' of sand grains.

And this is just the first few pages! The list goes on and on: He repeatedly confuses the thermodynamic concepts of 'closed' and 'isolated' systems; He seems to think that 'non-linear' equations are all somehow phenomenally complex and unsolvable and that the phrase 'non-linear' is therefore a synonym for being non-reductionist, non-rational, and, in short, 'postmodern'. (In doing so, he falls into many of the traps Alan Sokal identified in Fashionable Nonsense.)

I think that the basic concept behind the book could have been interesting, but due to Cilliers elementary-level grasp of half the subject matter with which he deals, the statement Cilliers himself makes on p. 133 (in reference to a recent book by Rouse) applies equally well to this text: "For me, reading this book was about as pleasant as it would be to eat it."

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Summary: All Without Referring to Wittgenstein?
Review: I read this book primarily through an interest in the philosophy of language. Of particular relevance in this respect is the emphasis on a characterisation of complexity as being opposed to traditional notions of representation. Cilliers draws parallels between the philosophy of Saussure and Derrida and scientific developments in distributed representation, particularly with respect to connectionist approaches as implemented in neural networks. Cilliers argues that a classical representational theory of language that posits syntax as an instantiation of semantics does not sufficiently allow for the complexity evident in language, but rather that meaning is constituted by the dynamic relationships between both the components of language and the environment in which it is embedded. Cilliers explicitly rejects rule-based symbol systems as being adequete for modelling language, referring to recent scientific research using neural networks to simulate language learning indicating that "though rules may be useful to describe linguistic phenomena, explicit rules need not be employed when language is acquired or when it is used" (p. 32). In Chapter 4 (pp. 48-57), Cilliers considers the Chinese Room Gedankenexperiment from the perspective of his thesis. He suggests that the debate has unquestionably assumed that the formal model of language represented by the argument is correct, that is, that a rule-book such as the one supposed is even possible. Cilliers suggests that this assumes certain features of language: that a formal grammar for a natural language can be constructed and represented in a lookup table; that there is a clean split between syntax and semantics; and that language represents rather than constitutes meaning (p. 53).

The overall picture of language that Cilliers develops has important parallels with the views of Wittgenstein, though, somewhat surprisingly, Wittgenstein is never explicitly mentioned (except with regard to his family concepts). Firstly, meaning is construed as occuring through dynamic processes (use) rather than static representations (the conception that Wittgenstein's private language argument criticises). Secondly, the idea that there is some fact of the matter (whether inside or outside human agents) that determines meaning is explicitly rejected. Finally, a straightforward split between syntax and semantics is denied (a distinction that the sceptical interpretation of Wittgenstein, offered by Kripke, takes advantage of).

In summary, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in making connections between dynamic systems theory and philosophy of mind or language -- Cilliers proves an effective communicator in both of the fields he wishes to connect.

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to complex systems
Review: Of the two I've read, this is by far the better introduction to complexity. Though sometimes redundant, Cilliers's book fleshes out the skeletal abstractions, and makes Derrida palatable even to the general reader.

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Summary: Complexity and Dead End
Review: The book combines elements of different philosophies: post-modernism, structuralism, and deconstruction. It is a meeting of vague philosophical generalizations and scientific terminology (e.g., neural networks), and as such, it muddles things instead of making them clear. The hope being that, if things look complex and muddled, people will consider the book profound.

I have to say that stylistically the book is fairly well written, yet this is not something one would read for entertainment. Bottom line: this is an attempt at some sort of philsophical synthesis which, in reality, is an intellectual dead end.

Rating:
Summary: Complexity and Philosophy
Review: This work is essential for a cutting-edge understanding of how two independently cultivated lines of investigation - complexity and postmodernism - have fortuitously dovetailed, providing us with a new level of perspective upon the character and evolution of contemporary technology. I highly recommend reading this work in tandem with Don Ihde's groundbreaking study EXPANDING HERMENEUTICS: VISUALISM IN SCIENCE, itself a phenomenologically well-grounded yet visionary exposition of where the computer-inspired "visual turn" in hermeneutics is leading us in the 21st century.