Complex Adaptive System
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Complex Adaptive System page
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A complex adaptive system is a dynamic network of interactions, but the behaviour of the ensemble may not be predictable according to the behaviour of the components. It is adaptive in that the individual and collective behaviour mutate and self-organise, corresponding to the change-initiating micro-event or collection of events. It is a "complex macroscopic collection" of relatively "similar and partially connected micro-structures" formed to adapt to the changing environment and increase their survivability as a macro-structure. The Complex Adaptive Systems approach builds on replicator dynamics.
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Core ideas
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Fighting entropie
While the universe is subject to entropy, some systems can withstand that entropy for a limited time and coalesce into systems with emergent behaviour. Self-organisation is realised in the physics of non-equilibrium processes (flow), in chemical reactions, where it is often characterised as self-assembly (creating molecules) and in biology, from the molecular to the ecosystem.
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Non linearity
A large number of systems are known to be “non-linear.” Examples include biological cells, organisms, the economy, brains, prey and predator populations, embryos, immune systems, ecosystems, human group behaviour within social structures, or stock markets.
A non-linear change is not based on a simple proportional relationship between cause and effect. Such changes are often abrupt, unexpected, and difficult to predict
A non-linear relationship or process occurs when a slight change in the value of a driver (i.e., an independent variable) produces a disproportional shift in the outcome (i.e., the dependent variable). Relationships, where there is a sudden discontinuity or change in rate, are sometimes referred to as abrupt and often form the basis of thresholds.
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Replicator dynamics
The replicator dynamics are part of evolutionary game theory and are especially prominent in models of cultural evolution. Evolutionary game theory uses principles of interactive behaviour to explain the emergence of behavioural regularities in organisms forming a population. The results of organisms’ interactions affect their fitness, measured by their reproduction ability. If one organism is fitter, it is more likely to reproduce than the other. An organism’s offspring inherit its traits. However, the offspring may differ from the parent in fitness because their fitness depends on their success in interactions with their contemporaries. As the population changes, the traits that confer fitness may change, too. The replicator dynamics explain changes in fitness that arise from changes in a population’s composition.
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Deep Dive
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Human complex adaptive system(s)
Although there are many types of adaptive systems, social, human systems most capture our attention. Self-organisation, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available from low-entropy sources.
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Human biology as a Complex Adaptive System
To survive, humans must extract energy from low-entropy sources (food and drink) by converting them into high-entropy ones.
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Our social world as a Complex Adaptive System
Although the phrase" complex adaptive system" is usually thought to have been coined at the Santa Fe Institute sometime during the 1990s, the systems-oriented social thinker Walter Buckley had already been using it as early as 1968 and with pretty much the same connotations as it is used today.
The idea that an equilibrium-seeking tendency dominated the dynamics of social systems had become entrenched in social thought ever since the great economist Vilfredo Pareto had enunciated it firmly in his early version of sociology in the late nineteenth century. For Pareto, as was true among most economists at the time (and, as hard to believe as it is, is still so), equilibrium-seeking dynamics were at the core of economic theory.
Contemporary insight about human decision-making brings a process approach to the forefront. A conception of tensions inherent in the process and a concern with the role and workings of man operating within an interaction matrix characterized by uncertainty, conflict, and other dissociative (as well as associative) processes underlying the structuring and restructuring of the extensive psychosocial system.
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What to do in a social CAS situation?
- You can’t change a complex system by changing parts, but you can change interactions
- Do not try to fix a problem, change the (eco)system
- Do not change mindsets, change the context
- There are no linear causalities in complex systems
- Heterogenous systems evolve, homogenous do not
- Learn where you are now (as a system), move to ”adjacent possible”, and evaluate again
- Sustainable change happens at the local level
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| Cynefin® |
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Social-ecological systems
The study of social-ecological systems (SES) has been significantly shaped by insights from research on complex adaptive systems (CAS). We offer a brief overview of the conceptual integration of CAS research and its implications for the advancement of SES studies and methods. We propose a conceptual typology of six organizing principles of CAS based on a comparison of leading scholars’ classifications of CAS features and properties. This typology clusters together similar underlying organizing principles of the features and attributes of CAS, and serves as a heuristic framework for identifying methods and approaches that account for the key features of SES. These principles can help identify appropriate methods and approaches for studying SES. We discuss three main implications of studying and engaging with SES as CAS. First, there needs to be a shift in focus when studying the dynamics and interactions in SES, to better capture the nature of the organizing principles that characterize SES behavior. Second, realizing that the nature of the intertwined social-ecological relations is complex has real consequences for how we choose methods and practical approaches for observing and studying SES interactions. Third, engagement with SES as CAS poses normative challenges for problem-oriented researchers and practitioners taking on real-world challenges.
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What science can tell you
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| Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems: organizing principles for advancing research methods and approaches - Rika Preiser - Ecology and Society |
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| The study of social-ecological systems (SES) has been significantly shaped by insights from research on complex adaptive systems (CAS). |
| https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art46/ |
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