I'll come back on this in more detail later but by coincidence I am on
Laurie Taylor's Radio 4 programme tomorrow part agreeing and part
arguing with a physicist who takes this sort of view. Basically the
position is that of 'simple complexity' which Paul Cilliers and myself
inter alia regard as a rather limited sub-set of complexity but is
argued for by those who want to have a sort of statistical mechanics
plus fix on complex systems. A book which takes that line is Michael
Strevens 'Bigger than Chaos' but see a very good critical review of the
arguments by Mark Colyvan at:
http://homepage.mac.com/mcolyvan/papers/Strevens.pdf
I won't attempt to summarize but the issue looks like that of 'enion
probability analysis' and the problems posed for this by 'other factors'
and other factors is what engenders complex complexity. This is a big
and perhaps fundamental debate with lots of consequences.
Now I have to re-read the physicist's book!
Regards
David Byrne
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