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. In a more fundamental form: living beings must allow negentropy into their (open) system to defeat entropy.
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| Peter A. Corning - Evolution and the Fate of Humankind - Published online by Cambridge University Press |
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| Much of the work in complexity science in recent years has been focused on the physical, structural, functional, and dynamical aspects of complex phenomena. However, complex living organisms are distinctive in that they are also subject to basic economic criteria, and to economic constraints. |
| As the biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky long ago pointed out: “No theory of evolution which leaves the phenomenon of adaptation an unexplained mystery can be satisfactory.” The purveyors of these theories often seem oblivious to the inescapable challenges associated with Darwin’s “struggle for existence” in the natural world, and they discount the economics – the costs and benefits of complexity. Nor can they explain the fact that some 99 percent of all the species that have ever evolved are now extinct. Life is a phenomenon that is at all times subject to the requirement that the bioeconomic benefits (direct or indirect) of any character or trait – including complexity – must outweigh the costs. It is subject to functional criteria and the calculus of economic costs and benefits in any given environmental context. |
The issue of how to define biological complexity has been much debated over the years, and it is evident that there is no one correct way to measure it; it can be defined in different ways for different purposes.
However, there are also a many other “proximate” ways of measuring the costs and benefits involved in “earning a living” in nature, and a number of familiar economic criteria are likely to have been important from a very early stage in the history of life on Earth – capital costs, amortization, operating costs, and, most especially, strict economic profitability. The returns had to outweigh the costs. |
| Living systems must adhere to the first and only law (so far) of “thermoeconomics,” namely, that the energetic benefits (the energy made available to the system to do work) must outweigh the costs required for capturing and utilizing it. From the very origins of life, energy capture and metabolism have played a key role. As biological complexity has increased over time, the work required to obtain and use energy to sustain the system has increased correspondingly. Indeed, improvements in bioenergetic technologies represent a major theme in evolutionary history and, in every case, involved synergistic phenomena. |
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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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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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System change
| Systems behaviour | Habit | Radical engagement |
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| A system produces the results it is producing because the people who are part of it continue to play the roles they are playing. | 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝘆 | ... starts with acknowledging where we are: accepting and taking responsibility for our roles—not just doing what is expected of us or whatever we like. We become part of the solution by becoming aware of how we are part of the problem, and acting accordingly. |
| Transforming a system requires attending to the system as a whole, to its parts, and to the relationships among these parts. | 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 | ... entails relating with other people in three corresponding dimensions—as actors playing roles in the system, as parties with our own interests, and as entangled kin— not just in the one or two ways we’re most comfortable with. We do this by connecting with others, and ourselves, as fully rounded, three-dimensional beings. |
| A system cannot be fully grasped from any single perspective or position. | 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗨𝗻𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 | ... involves seeing more of what’s happening by looking from multiple perspectives—not just from those we’re accustomed to and comfortable with. We sense more by stretching to seek out and learn with people located at other positions in the system. |
| Systems are structured to keep producing the behaviors and results they're producing, and therefore often seem solid and unchangeable—but they're not. They are built, and they collapse. They crack and are cracked, which opens up new possibilities that some people find frightening and others find hopeful. | 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘀 | ... involves looking for, moving toward, and working with these cracks—not ignoring or shying away from them. We do this by seeking out and working with openings, alongside others who are doing the same. |
| Transforming a complex system requires learning through doing—not just thinking and then doing. | 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗪𝗮𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 | ... involves experimenting: trying things out that we’re not sure will work, paying careful attention to the results, and adjusting accordingly—not just doing what is familiar or safe. We discover what is possible through working with our hands and feeling our way forward. |
| Transforming a system requires actions by multiple people with multiple capacities in multiple positions—not just by one person or organization. | 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 | ... involves collaborating with unlike and unlikely others, making our differences productive—not just with people we like, and not forcing or feigning amiability or agreement. We do this by stepping up our engagement from just talking to also acting together. |
| A system is organized and structured, often over many years, in a way that produces and reproduces its characteristic set of behaviors. It can be reorganized and restructured to produce different behaviors, but rarely easily or quickly. System transformation is therefore a long and winding journey—not a short or straightforward project. | 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 | ... involves adjusting our pace and course as we go—not just sprinting for a short while, nor just pushing on until we burn out. We combine persevering and resting to ensure that we remain effective and healthy on the journey. |
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A neurological view of ‘Outside-In’
As humans, we do not ‘see’ the world around us ‘directly’ but predict what we will see. If the prediction and the feedback that comes in via our senses match, no extra energy is needed in your brain to synchronise both (prediction and incoming feedback).
- ‘Inside-Out’ is, therefore, always the first and predictive step.
As described above, the second phase will cost you energy if the prediction does not match the feedback. But evolution has found some shortcuts to minimise this energy. We can ignore the discrepancy and convince ourselves that our prediction was correct after all. You may be familiar with ‘cognitive dissonance’ when this phenomenon occurs in a broader psychological framework.
‘Outside-In’ is the human description of what happens neurologically when you still process the feedback received in your worldview. This processing step costs energy. If you can do this during your working day below your stress level, you will feel healthy but mentally tired.
- ‘Outside-In’ is nothing more or less than the willingness to adjust your worldview.
But beware. When you have lived in cognitive dissonance for years, and the situation apparently returns to your worldview, the ‘aha’ is not an ‘Outside-In’ experience; on the contrary, it is an ‘Inside-Out’ experience.
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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
| Content source |
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| Cynefin® |
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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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