Complex Thinking for a Complex World – About Reductionism, Disjunction and Systemism by Edgar Morin
Thus we have the primary definition of the complexity of a system, given by Ashby as being a measure of the diversity of parts within the system. This was the first important definition of complexity in the field of science.
However, the system is also less than the sum of its parts, in the sense that it imposes constraints on the behavior of the parts, so that some qualities or properties of the parts cannot be expressed. This phenomenon is especially evident is social systems: as individuals we have many qualities and potentials that present us with many possibilities for behavior which we cannot exhibit because of constraints, due to socially determined laws or inhibitions due to group norms.
“The Whole is Other than the Sum of the Parts” Kurt Koffka
http://www.intropsych.com/ch04_senses/whole_is_other_than_the_sum_of_the_parts.html
The crisis of classical science began with the breakdown of the great principle of universal determination. This breakdown is provoked in the 18th century by the second law of thermodynamics. This law implies the existence of irreversible processes, and this introduces a time-element in physics. Before this it was thought that processes are always reversible, but the second law implies that the passage of time introduces disorder that makes deterministic prediction impossible.
Living systems represent a complex type of organization. The organization of a living system is more complex than the organization of the molecules of which it is composed. However, this organization is achieved using only molecules from the physical universe – living systems are not made from something like ‘living matter’, but from ordinary physical and chemical substances. “Life” is a property created through complex self-organisation. Life is characterized by processes of self-reproduction and self-repair, processes that involve knowledge and memory. The central feature of a living system is the self-organizational capacity to produce and reproduce itself. However, as von Foerster noted, calling this self-organisation is paradoxical, because the organizational processes of life require a continuous input of energy. We need energy even when we sleep – energy to drive our heartbeat, our digestion, our breathing. We use energy in all moments of life. However, we also need to compensate for the dissipation of energy in line with the second law of thermodynamics, and this means we must take in energy from the environment. We do this by ingesting material that contains energy, and to this we need knowledge of the environment, and in particular knowledge of the organization of the environment. So self-organisation requires an interplay between the knowledge of how to organize the self and the knowledge of how the environment is organized.
A recursive process, in the sense at stake here, is a process where the product produced by the process is necessary for sustaining the productive process. A living system is like this, in that it is both the product of a process and the producer of that process. As living systems we are both the product and the producer of the product. Societies are also like this. A society is the product of interactions between individuals, but the society has emergent properties that are retroactive on the individuals, and hence shape what we become as human beings, so we are both the product and producer of the society.
