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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