Complex Systems and Anarchism - Infoshop News

Complex Systems and Anarchism - Infoshop News: "Complex Systems and Anarchism

by Gavin Mendel-Gleeson
Red and Black Revolution #15 (Ireland)

Analysing human societies as complex systems can provide an insight into historical processes and the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism Complex systems theory is a scientific theory coming out of a tradition of catastrophe theory, chaos theory, control theory, and especially cybernetics. Complex systems theory arises as a rejection of the traditional programme of reductionist science. It rejects reductionism as being both unnecessary and intractable.

Traditional physics has attempted to find fundamental laws at the smallest granularity possible. However, it is now known that because of the nature of interactions at very detailed granularity, it can be computationally intractable to predict behaviour of aggregate systems. Water, for instance, is best described (under most conditions) with fluid flow equations which describe aggregate behaviour with relatively simple (non-linear) equations.

Attempting to describe it as an aggregate wave function of 1026 interacting quantum particles is not computationally feasible. Instead complex systems theory attempts to describe systems at a natural granularity that allows for tractable prediction of behaviour."