[RESUMO] In proclaiming that the science of this century would be one of complexity, Stephen Hawking pointed out the importance of understanding phenomena resulting from interactions in intricate systems, but the decline of this field of research shows that the physicist may have underestimated the factors that stand in the way of the fulfillment of his prophecy. .
Stephen Hawking has proclaimed that the science of this century will be that of complexity, a prophecy that seems to be confirmed by many signs of enthusiasm. Only in the month of July, this Sheet offered two great examples.
On the 2nd, Australian philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith, interviewed about the recently released translation of his latest book, Metazoa (However), highlighted the need for more research into the hidden “complexity” in the lives of animals.
Two weeks later, the notion was used 14 times in the article “What would life be like if there were no more nature” by young zoologist Lauren Holt of the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
Why do they both use this term? The fact is that, from the immune system to the market, through a brain or an anthill, there is no lack of phenomena in which vast self-organized networks give rise to – through simple operational schemes and without any central control – sophisticated behaviors and information processing. In addition, most of such sets have adaptive capacity, either by evolution or by learning.
This is perhaps the most concise answer to the question about the meaning of complexity, but there are many others, which certainly better answer the many disciplinary concerns.
Even so, they almost always refer to interactions that lead to non-linear behavior of intricate adaptive systems that, far from equilibrium, can either remain relatively stable or prove capable of generating abrupt oscillations, bursting bubbles, crashes, convulsions and collapses.
The big question is whether the studies on such interactions are advancing as far as Hawking expected when he launched his prophecy about what, today, it seems more accurate to call the new sciences of complexity.
An indicator may be the academic trajectory of John Sterman, director of the Dynamic Systems Group at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and author of the award-winning bestseller “Business Dynamics”, already approaching 20,000 citations in Google Scholar.
There is a clear thematic contrast between his production before and after the early 2000s. The researcher abandoned any new effort to theorize about complex systems to devote himself to pedagogical proposals in the context of climate urgency and sustainability. He also authored the En-ROADS solutions simulator, which has helped so much in the negotiations of the Climate Convention.
It is worth asking whether such a turn in Sterman’s academic work would be fortuitous or an isolated fact. Could such a reduction in interest in eventual theoretical advances on complex systems not reflect a broader phenomenon, like a kind of decadence of the “sciences of complexity” themselves?
Apparently, at least until 2009, there would be no reason to talk about a decline. That’s when Oxford University Press released an excellent book on the subject, “Complexity: a Guided Tour”, by award-winning computer scientist Melanie Mitchell.
In conclusion, Mitchell highlights several restrictions that had already emerged since the mid-1990s on the possibility of complexity research generating unified science. The researcher even registers a radical change in the attitude of the students of the Santa Fé Institute, the research center where she works as a teacher: the students became skeptical and questioning, after more than a decade intoxicated and elated.
The computer scientist reaffirms, however, her confidence in the future of the enterprise, despite the immense damage suffered since 1995, when Scientific American magazine published an antagonistic cover story, written by science journalist and professor of history of science John Horgan.
Based on a dozen interviews with leading exponents of complexity research, Horgan was utterly baffled by the lack of unity of purpose among highly speculative projects. His article did even more damage when it was transformed, in 1996, into the eighth chapter of the book “O Fim da Ciência” (Companhia das Letras).
It’s impossible to gauge the extent to which Horgan’s fierce onslaught took the charm out of what he dubbed “chaosplexology,” but it certainly did a lot to make many begin to wonder whether the new sciences of complexity were, in fact, moving in the direction of Hawking’s prophecy.
Melanie Mitchell’s excellent and optimistic book appeared precisely in the throes of the phase of complete euphoria: the year following its publication, 2010, registered a ceiling in the number of research centers on the subject (60), spread across the Americas, Europe, China, Japan and Australia. In addition, EU funding for projects on complexity, which reached €100 million, was discontinued in 2015.
Everything indicates that there has been a clear drop, also confirmed by the fact that many researchers who continue to study complex adaptive systems prefer not to use the term complexity. This process calls for a triple discussion: on the characteristics of ascension, on the reasons for the reversal of expectations and on the status of research that perseveres.
Nothing more and nothing less than delivering the book “Histoire et Sociologie des Sciences de la Complexité”, by the young Parisian professor of Italian origin Fabrizio Li Vigni. A by-product of his gigantic doctoral thesis, the work was published in 2021 by Éditions Matériologiques and became an unavoidable reference for anyone who wants to scrutinize the possible futures of scientific studies on complexity.
What this detailed analytical description confirms is that there is nothing wrong with the metaphorical image that associates research on complexity with a Tower of Babel, from which some kind of Esperanto does not seem to emerge. That didn’t stop Li Vigni from putting forward a proposal for a solution to the impasse.
By mapping the work of hundreds of researchers in the sciences of complexity, the author discovered some 20 variants, of which 7 even constitute reasonable “archipelagos”. Four are celebrities he dubbed “free electrons” (such as Warren Weaver and Joseph Tainter), and the rest involve very peculiar notions of complexity, widespread in areas such as health, ecology, computing and mathematics. In the latter, the term “complexity” almost always receives some hermetic qualifier – “combination”, “cyclomatic” or “communicative”.
Could it be possible to maintain at least a small part of Hawking’s optimism in the face of such confusion? The answer, of course, tends to be negative. However, a ray of light at the end of the tunnel emerged in the development of Li Vigni’s historical, sociological and even ethnographic research, focused on the influence that the two main poles that promoted the sciences of complexity had.
In addition to the already mentioned and active Instituto Santa Fé (1984- ), there is the Parisian pole, initially led by Crea (Research Center in Applied Epistemology, 1982-2012) and, in a certain way, continued by the ISC-PIF (Instituto dos Sistemas Complexes – Paris Île de France), created in 2005.
The influence of these two poles translates, today, into countless circles of university researchers who deal with the sciences of complexity without, however, considering it more important than their own disciplinary traditions. Something very common in faculties of physics and mathematics, but also in life and cognitive sciences. In addition, these researchers interact at thematic conferences, seek crowdfunding and report results in many scientific journals.
In such a context, Li Vigni says he was faced with a paradox. If, on the one hand, the boundaries of complexity sciences are malleable, undefined and open, on the other hand, its label shows a consolidated, recognized and clear identity, even though there is undoubtedly a strong tension between the solidity of the interdisciplinary field and the openness of its epistemic, social and institutional characteristics.
Hence the main proposal of the book is the adoption of the concept of scientific platform, an expression that, however, has already been used in several other senses, as shown, for example, by the recent creation of the Scientific Platform Pasteur-USP. It is even possible that this is an honorable way out of the so-called paradox, but it does not give the slightest sign of the future of the sciences of complexity.
In short, it seems that Stephen Hawking may have greatly underestimated the degree of disorder hostile to the fulfillment of his prophecy.
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