next big idea?, The

Science affects the lives of the general public in two main ways: by saving lives, energy, and time through new innovations, and by changing the ways we think about the world around us through conceptual models of nature. These conceptual models can capture the popular imagination as strongly as any invention - for example, Social Darwinism or the Newtonian clockwork universe. In this century the rise of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics has profoundly altered how we interpret space and time - witness Dali's drippy watches - even if few of us can identify Schrodinger's equation.

So, then, what is the next big idea that will migrate from science into our collective consciousness? My candidate is an interdisciplinary approach I call "complex systems thinking," but which goes by a variety of names such as "complexity theory." Here I will try my hand at explaining what is so great about complex systems thinking and how it might affect the way your children and grandchildren view the world.

WHAT IS A COMPLEX SYSTEM?

Complex systems thinking starts with the assumption that the world around us is best understood as a tangle of interlocking systems that strongly influence one another. Here is an example: try to explain how you sign your name on a check. It is a simple, almost unconscious act, yet to describe it fully you are forced to talk about a series of muscle contractions and relaxations directed by the nervous system in response to commands generated by the brain. Understanding just muscles, or nerves, or the brain would be a stiff enough challenge, because each is a biological system all by itself. When these systems interact, the task of explanation is enough to give you a headache, not to mention writer's cramp!

Modem science excels at explaining the minute details of single-system events, but it bogs down when systems interact. In my own field of meteorology, scientists are much better equipped to explain short-term weather than weather over long time scales -- "climate" - because climate turns out to be critically dependent not only on the atmosphere, but also on the oceans, soil, ice, human societies, and even extraterrestrial intruders such as asteroids. We understand such systems as the oceans and ice much less well than the atmosphere alone. When they all interact, all at once - as in real life - the result can be very confusing! Hence, the knotty problems at the heart of the global warming debate.

Complex systems thinking aspires to clear the air, so to speak, by providing the tools and the mental pictures necessary for deciphering interactions among systems. Three ideas may help simplify this gargantuan task.

Some System Interactions Matter More than Others

With a careful eye it is possible to eliminate some of the complexity of the problem. Peter Eisenberger, director of the Columbia (University) Earth Institute, is spearheading a multidisciplinary effort to understand complex systems in the earth sciences. He draws an analogy with the health sciences, pointing out that "we know for humans that 90 percent of DNA appears to have no function. In a similar manner one might expect that there are some critical interactions and phenomena in the overall Earth system which essentially determine the behavior of the global human/Earth system." The media darling El Nino is a case in point: ocean temperatures off the west coast of South America strongly influence global winds and weather, while (for example) soil temperatures over Australia do not.

Important System Interactions Are Often Generic

In 1992 Theodore Modis, a management-science consultant, wrote Predictions (Simon & Schuster, 1992), a book with a very simple and stunning premise: everything from the number of Gothic cathedrals to the growth of a child's vocabulary to the spread of AIDS in the United States can be understood as examples of a single underlying pattern. By plotting the running total of these phenomena through time, Modis illustrates a recurring phenomenon he calls the "S-curve of cumulative growth." In mathematical terms it is the solution of the "predator-prey equations" that were originally developed to explain biological patterns such as the growth of bacteria in a bowl of broth! The exciting idea at the root of Modis's book is that complex social phenomena can be boiled down in some cases to a simple model of biological growth that can be applied generically across disciplines.

These Interactions Can Be Simulated and Understood Using Personal Computers

Modis's examples are based on one of the simplest models of systems interaction. Many other complex systems require a computer to simulate their evolution because, as Eisenberger points out, "in studying systems, we will have a variety of scenarios as possible outcomes rather than one answer." Consequently, we are now entering an era when for the first time scientists have the appropriate tools to tackle these problems.

Furthermore, computer-based solutions mean that the answers, although dependent on equations, are expressed as moving images. Therefore, understanding complex systems is an adventure in visual comprehension not limited to a few overeducated scientists. This attribute is being exploited in education and business circles, in which thinking skills are developed by using computer-based software tools. Barry Richmond, the impetus behind the widely used STELLA software package, explains (in System Dynamics Review, Vol. 9, no. 2, Summer 1993, p. 113) how modern computing power can be used to educate: "Systems thinkers use diagramming languages [such as STELLA] to visually depict the feedback structures of these systems. They then use [computer] simulation to play out the associated dynamics." A quick search of the World Wide Web reveals that the generic system modeling afforded by STELLA is currently being used to solve nonlinear problems in physics, loan amortization, squirrel populations, the water cycle on Earth, and a hypothetical business budget crunch (see http://www. hps-inc.com/tutorial/tutorial.html, which explains how to model the latter step-by-step).

WHAT'S IN IT FOR US

Today's personal computers are like Ferraris in the driveway; they possess amazing speed and power that most users never exploit. Complex systems thinking may tap into this resource by giving the average PC user an ability to "play out" complex events and learn from them how to navigate in a world of systems. I can envision a day not too long from now when you can use your computer to do the following types of things:

Your morning commute is minimized by running an interactive model of traffic flow during breakfast.

You make large purchases and investments based on computer simulations of various possible future economic scenarios.

The stock market shuts down temporarily, before a major crash occurs, because models indicate that the global economic system is vulnerable to heavy losses.

You take vitamins and medicines not on a strict "once a day" or "four times a day" regimen, but rather at times and in quantities that adaptive models of your health deem the most advantageous for you.

As a consequence, ordinary citizens of the twenty-first century may become accustomed to viewing life around them as interlocking complex systems that can be worked with, even if they can never be tamed.

John Knox is a post-doctoral research scientist in the atmospheric sciences at Columbia University through the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies, located in the complex system of New York City. He can be reached via email at jknox@giss.nasa.gov.

Copyright National Forum: Phi Kappa Phi Journal Spring 1998
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