Think Complexity, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. Complexity Science

Complexity science is relatively new; it became recognizable as a field, and was given a name, in the 1980s. But its newness is not because it applies the tools of science to a new subject, but because it uses different tools, allows different kinds of work, and ultimately changes what we mean by “science”.

To demonstrate the difference, I’ll start with an example of classical science: suppose someone asks you why planetary orbits are elliptical. You might invoke Newton’s law of universal gravitation and use it to write a differential equation that describes planetary motion. Then you can solve the differential equation and show that the solution is an ellipse. QED!

Most people find this kind of explanation satisfying. It includes a mathematical derivation—so it has some of the rigor of a proof—and it explains a specific observation, elliptical orbits, by appealing to a general principle, gravitation.

Let me contrast that with a different kind of explanation. Suppose you move to a city like Detroit that is racially segregated, and you want to know why it’s like that. If you do some research, you might find a paper by Thomas Schelling called “Dynamic Models of Segregation”, which proposes a simple model of racial segregation:

Here is my description of the model, from Chapter 9:

The Schelling model of the city is an array of cells where each cell represents a house. The houses are occupied by two kinds of “agents”, labeled red and blue, in roughly equal ...