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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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
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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
