Approach to complexity

Computer-aided Visualization of Psycho-social Structures (Part #8)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

Some idea of complexity in the psycho-social system has been given above. It is assumed here that the only useful collective decisions topromote peace must be made on the basis of some means of ordering complexity in a systematic manner -- or else run the risk of using simplistic models inadequate to the situations, on other than a short- term basis, and possibly counter-productive.

The task to be tackled parallels that in the case of natural environment systems described by David Pimentel in which there is a multiplicity of inter-specific "food chains", together with many branches and cross-connections among food chains making a structure of interactions called "food webs". The complexity of these food webs is such that no one has yet worked out the complete pattern of food relationships and interactions in any natural community. The relationships between 50 species in a given community results in a diagram "so full of lines that it is difficult to follow" and this only represents one quarter of the 210 known species in a "simple" community. [16] In such a situation a simplistic model used as a guide to the use of pesticides could be disastrous.

The approach advocated to penetrate complexity is to develop uses of an existing device which could handle and display the multiplicity of relationships in a manner to facilitate understanding. This is described in the next section.

In describing the device it is unnecessary to distinguish between the different types of entity or relationships making up the complexity. In each case the device is handling entities and relationships. Categorization of these features should be left to the user and not limit the flexibility with which data can be handled.

The advantages of this sort of approach have been argued elsewhere. Whether attention is focussed on organizations, concepts or problems, or even the components of natural eco-system, it is possible to distinguish relatively invariant continuing entities but only to the extent and in the field in which they each maintain two types of relationships -- internal ones to various sub-systems and structures and external ones which link them, either as a whole or via a sub- system, to their surrounds. The entity is in fact a pattern ofrelationships, subject to change but recognizably extended in time.

This way of regarding the objects of our attention helps to resolve the dichotomy between the Individual and society and many other pseudo- problems resulting from the tendency, built into language, to regard entities as "things", rather than systematically related sequences of events. [8,17]

This "loose" approach can be achieved by handling the entities and relationships as networks which can be processed and represented using graph theory techniques. [18] In effect, a non-quantitative topological structure of the psycho-social system is built up, to which dynamic and quantitative significance can be added as and when appropriate data becomes available.

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]