The Paradigm of Complexity Science

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think that going back to our history, let's just talk about that because I think it does establish the paradigm. You know, when the steam engine was built, we got very concerned about his efficiency. And Maxwell invented control theory in his famous 1868 paper on regulators and governors. At the same time, you have Russell and Darwin developing the theory of natural selection. Now, 100 years later, those ideas are really consolidated. All of them are in correspondence. So it's that conjunction of ideas that pertain to purposeful machines is the paradigm.

Complexity scientists have been able to make an impressive amount of progress despite the fact that there is not universal agreement about what "complexity" actually is. We know it when we see it, perhaps, but there are a number of aspects to the phenomenon, and different researchers will naturally focus on their favorites. Today's guest, David Krakauer, is president of the Santa Fe Institute and a longtime researcher in complexity. He points the finger at the concept of agency. A ball rolling down a hill just mindlessly obeys equations of motion, but a complex system gathers information and uses it to adapt. We talk about what that means and how to think about the current state of complexity science.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/10/242-david-krakauer-on-complexity-agency-and-information/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

David Krakauer received his D.Phil. in evolutionary biology from Oxford University. He is currently President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Previously he was at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he was the founding director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the Co-director of the Center for Complexity and Collective Computation. He was included in Wired magazine's list of "50 People Who Will Change the World."

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.