In this blog, I present a power-based interpretation of complexity theory and test it with commentary on power conflicts in the news and in daily life.  More specifically, I’m passing these conflicts through the lenses of what I call a complexity theory of power, a fusion of complexity theory and power theory.  The basic premise of the theory is that 1) power imposed by one party on another fosters “disorganized complexity” and 2) power exercised collaboratively advances “organized complexity” or self-organization.  From complexity theory this draws on Warren Weaver’s distinctions between organized and disorganized complexity in his seminal 1948 essay “Science and Complexity”.  From power theory, this places on a continuum two sometimes conflicting currents, one that tends to view power in terms of domination and another that emphasizes democratic empowerment or democratization.

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Sunday, July 28, 2013

This morning’s New York Times (7-28-2013) has an editorial entitled “Mr. Putin’s War on Gays: Will his crackdown keep people from the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year?”   It recounts these actions taken by Putin:

Earlier this month, he signed a law banning the adoption of Russian-born children to gay couples and to any couple or single parent living in any country where marriage equality exists. Last month, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing the police to arrest tourists and foreigners suspected of being gay or pro-gay and detain them for up to 14 days. He also signed a bill classifying “homosexual” propaganda as pornography with vague wording that could subject anyone arguing for tolerance or educating children about homosexuality to arrest and fines.

Regarding the Winter Olympics to be hosted by Russia next year, the editorial also raises the interesting prospect that “Gay athletes and supporters of gay rights could decide not to attend the Games, or nascent calls for a formal Olympic boycott could gather steam.”

This is the type of power conflict that a complexity theory of power can elucidate. Continue reading →

Thursday, May 30, 2013

[The following is based on part of a presentation I gave last year at the 20^th Winter Chaos Conference in Montpelier, VT on March 23, 2012.]

So, after settling back into the U.S. in 1972, I was pursuing the conclusion I had arrived at shortly before ending my three year stay in Brazil, namely that information was the analytical key to understanding the military dictatorship. But, that conclusion now had a new twist. I had become intrigued by the possibility that information defined as negative entropy, the cornerstone of Claude Shannon’s information theory, had a political resonance. Viewed strictly as a tool for electrical engineers, information theory provided no justification for drawing any conclusions about politics. One electrical engineer who had studied with Shannon at MIT confirmed for me what I had read about Shannon, that he entertained no applications of information theory beyond the purely technical realm for which he had designed the theory. Continue reading →

Sunday, May 19, 2013

[The following is based on a presentation I gave last year at the 20^th Winter Chaos Conference in Montpelier, VT on March 23, 2012.   Originally entitled “A Complexity Theory of Politics”, I now find it more appropriate to call it “A Complexity Theory of Power”.]

35 years ago, I made a bold claim when I wrote that “…dictatorship can be described as the politics of the probable or the politics of entropy and democracy as the politics of the improbable or the politics of negative entropy. Because democratic and dictatorial systems are in these terms respectively analogous to open and closed thermodynamic systems, we may begin to speculate about the possible future development of a science of political thermodynamics” (McCullough, 1977).

I spent the better part of the 1970s focused on this prospect. Given that, over three decades later, I still don’t hear people talking quite along these lines, perhaps the wisest course of action is to let these ideas rest in peace. But, in recent times, I have been drawn back into this line of thought as if pulled by some strange attractor. In the process, I have found myself combining perspectives of complexity theory and political power theory. The result is something which extends beyond political systems to broader processes, what I am calling a complexity theory of power. Continue reading →

There’s something happening here.

What it is ain’t exactly clear.

from “For What It’s Worth” by Stephen Stills

Link to Portuguese version

I Googled “complexity revolution” a few times over the past few weeks. During that period, the number of hits went from 9,000 some to 12,500. Clearly something is stirring here. Another testimony to this is the fact that my first choice for a Google blogspot domain name –“ComplexityRevolution” — is already taken. So I inserted a hyphen, making the full URL http://www.Complexity-Revolution.blogspot.com. (I have purchased a custom domain, ComplexityRevolution.org, but have been unsuccessful so far in pointing this blog to it.)

Whatever “complexity revolution”means, I am, with this blog, jumping into the dialogue – and the debate. Continue reading →