*DEEP SIMPLICITY

The Illusion of Simplicity

John Gribbin always provides a very thoughtful and well-informed read through whatever topic attracts his fancy. It has taken him several years to decide that Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life is a subject worth paying attention to and presenting to the public whose attention he has deservedly earned over many years of scientific reporting and commentary. This book covers no new ground that hasn't been presented elsewhere, since the first books on Complexity began to emerge in the early 90s.

However, it does present a distinctive point of view about the subject, stated in the title: chaos and complexity may appear to be complex, but in reality they are simple and intelligible in their basic principles, like all the rest of science that uses mathematics. His intention is to 'take the obvious step of trying to explain chaos and complexity the simple way, from the bottom up - for everybody'. His insight is that 'chaos and complexity obey simple laws - essentially, the same simple laws discovered by Isaac Newton more than three centuries ago. Far from overturning four centuries of scientific endeavour, as some accounts would lead you to believe, these new developments show how a long-established scientific understanding of simple laws can explain (though not predict) the seemingly inexplicable behaviour of weather systems, stock markets, earthquakes, and even people.'

So when you read this book you will get the impression that the insights of chaos and complexity theory are a part of science as usual and that nothing significant has changed in our understanding of nature. In one sense he is right. But in what I regard as a more profound sense he is deeply wrong. His error lies in leaving out the significance of the new theories as they relate to human action in the world. So Gribbin has effectively left out the person who uses the new insights to inform action, and has focussed entirely on the way the theories make a new class of phenomena intelligible. This is indeed science as usual, and for me misses the main point of the revolution that has occurred.

The range of topics covered by Gribbin is comprehensive and the treatment clear, with illuminating vignettes about major players in the development of the new sciences, including Poincaré, Mandelbrot. Lorenz, Turing, Kauffman, and Lovelock. All of these people used mathematics and computer simulations to explore the world of the nonlinear, where the whole is different from the sum of the parts. Since mathematics proceeds with logical deduction from basic postulates, its form of explanation is simple once you understand the underlying principles and assumptions. Gribbin is a master at the art of simplifying and explaining, and this is the strength of the book. Whatever topic you may want to get insights into, from the weather to earthquakes, biological extinctions and Gaia theory, here is a beautifully clear exposition of the underlying principles, which are indeed simple though the results are often counterintuitive and take some puzzling over.

However, when Gribbin says that something is explained, he means that there is an approach to the subject that uses the usual scientific method. To say that Kauffman has explained the origin of life is certainly stretching a point, when he has done no more than develop an original approach to the role of catalytic sets and networks in understanding aspects of self-organisation in living systems - a significant achievement in itself, but not an explanation of life's origins, as Kauffman would be the first to agree. On the other hand, Gribbin is very good on models of the great extinctions of species that have occurred in the course of evolution. He emphasises that quite different assumptions lead to basically the same, observed power-law pattern of species extinctions, so that we really don't have an explanation in causal terms.

The limitation of this book is its failure to recognise that chaos and complexity theories have opened a new era in science because the intrinsic unpredictability of nature that they reveal requires that we adopt a different attitude to the natural world from the traditional scientific stance of prediction and control. Where laws prevail in nature, there we can use them to design artefacts such as TV sets and airplanes, to design drugs that influence metabolism or genes, or indeed to influence the growth of plants as in the use of fertilisers in farming or gene transfer in genetic engineering. However, the consequences of these activities are all unpredictable within the broader context of complex systems, which include the weather, the human body and ecosystems such as farms and the wider environment. These systems we assume to be consistent in their behaviour, and therefore intelligible; and indeed we have some insight into principles on which they operate in some cases.

However, because we are unable to predict the behaviour of the complex systems on which the quality of life on earth depends, which is most of nature, we have to modify radically the stance of control and management towards nature that science has traditionally adopted. We have to learn to participate in the unpredictable creativity of the natural world, which requires that we cultivate different ways of knowing and doing than in conventional science and technology, These necessarily include evaluation of qualities, not just the measurement of quantities and the deduction of the mathematical relationships that govern them. We have not developed the holistic perception that goes with direct knowing or intuition that is part of our equipment for assessing the more subtle properties of complex systems, indicating their state of health, and helping us to make ethical decisions about our effects on others, including Gaia. The separation of the arts and the sciences in our education system is a contributory factor to this deficiency. The revolution in science that comes with chaos and complexity rolls through just about every aspect of our culture. However, Gribbin has chosen to ignore this in order to tell a story about the intelligible simplicity of complex systems. It's a very good story, and perfectly legitimate as far as it goes. Just somewhat deficient in terms of the deeper issues that we now face.

Professor Brian Goodwin teaches the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College and is the author of 'How the Leopard Changed its Spots'