In my professional
capacity as a college educator, I am frustrated with the word
“complexity,” not just in the limited sense of the
Black Box debate, but in all its instances.
In complexity mathematics, complexity is ultimately a measure
of magnitude. A problem is P or NP if the quantity of steps to
its solution(s) is bounded by some order of magnitude of the
problem’s size. Complexity, then, for that most
militaristic of disciplines, answers the question ‘how
much?’ and specifically, answers the question ‘how
much work is required to produce a solution (set)?’ In pure
mathematics, the ‘steps toward solution(s)’ are work
performed by a human. In applied mathematics, the
‘steps’ may represent a natural process, in which
case the ‘steps” complexity is a measure of work
expressible in ergs. Either way, the word
‘complexity’ is a pseudonym for
‘quantity.’
But complex things, whatever they are, have qualities in
addition to “muchness.” They also have
transformational properties–high quantities of dependence,
interdependence, interaction, or interrelation. Again, without
reference to concrete instances, ‘complexity’ in all
these abstract aspects is reducible to quantity. A single
IF→THEN relationship is not complex, by itself. Is it?
‘Complexity’ is a term which includes in its
semantic foundations the presumption of agential limitation. A
process, like reading, which is complex to a five year old, is
not complex to an adult. Nor are cellular functions, which I find
dauntingly complex, at all so to practicing cellular
biologists.
Whenever I think of something as complex, I can’t also
but help think of it as possessing my candidate replacement term,
contingency. What I like about this alternative word is that it
contains no reference to any agential bias. If humidity and
temperature combine with pressure, in certain further contingent
ways, it will rain. Otherwise not. Fluid dynamicists are tempted
to call a thunderstorm a ‘complex’ dynamical system.
Isn’t a thunderstorm more virtuously described as a
‘contingent’ dynamical system?
I think that what really happens in public dialogue is that
when the quantity of contingent processes that make a thing a
thing exceed our brains’ well-known chunking capacity, we
bail out to the emotional appeal of calling it
‘complex.’ This term has no materialistically
rigorous definition, as far as I know. The term always includes
an acknowledgment, however tacit, of insufficiency.
‘Complex’ relative to what? is the form of the
logical pass/fail question. To be rigorous scientists, as well as
rigorous debaters, we should eschew our emotional fascinations
with the grandeur or challenge of our respective fields which
lead us to use the term ‘complex’ at all.
The reason I am submitting this is because after the Black Box
debate, an astonishing number of scientists still use this term
as a saltire to ward off the blows of attack, or as a signal word
to indicate what great minds they must have to deal with such
labyrinthine mysteries. Even the much-maligned Gould uses it in
his morphospace diagram, with ‘complexity’ increasing
to the right side. What is really increasing, that can be
measured, is contingency.
If I don’t list every example of complexity I can think
of, someone will likely be able to think of a counter-example,
and I would welcome that. I would like to see a closely-reasoned
example of when the term ‘complex’ can be applied in
a formally operant way that makes no appeal to agential
relativity. Otherwise, if we borrow ‘contingency’
from the philosophers, or ‘conditionality’ from the
technologists, I think we would save ourselves quite a bit of
wasted finger-effort, typing away at terministic mercury.
