Complexity: your definition.

[blampow]

Hi all, longtime fan/lurker with a question for anyone interested: what's your definition of complexity?

T. McKenna/Ken Wilber/Ray Kurzweil/bluehoney.org etc make much of its increasing presence from free-floating electrons, through evolution and up to us, but what is it in itself that we seem to recognise it when we see it without having a rigorous definition? Seems to me it involves order and randomness in their maximum interpenetration without sacrificing the integrity of either: a complex system is thus one whose replication/comprehension is possible though difficult/extensive.

So, I thought that was fairly crisp and snappy, but I'm interested in crits/alternate definitions. Anyone?

[Humming]

That is an interesting question.

McKenna defines "novelty" as the complexity of organization within matter.

As Nitezche wrote, "Out of chaos comes order".

I think that your definition is actually quite good: complexity is a synergy between chaos/entropy and order/evolution of organization.

[silentwolf]

"Out of Chaos comes Order." I think it's more like, "Out of the infinite comes structure and the finite," or better yet, "Out of freedom comes slavery."

Complexity has to do with how many simple units are stacked up and arranged in an ordered fashion to create a specific item. The higher the complexity, the more rigid and defined it becomes, with the possibilities for further complexity extremely limited. Complexity is about dedication to a specific task. The less complex the item is, the more possibilities that are open in complicating it to a point that it is modified for only one task.

That's just my point of view, of course. Thanks for the question, it helped me to see something I wouldn't have looked at otherwise.

[eaglesyes]

i like the simple things it's so much simpler...
the best things in life are free...don't worry be happy

[Eagle Wing]

Blampow,

your definition sounds like a concise version of that principle, which is admittedly rather less than rigorously precise.
The whole system of Life, from atomic orderings to molecular combinations networked into DNA-RNA-Ribosome-protein associations, etc. on up to the interactions of ecosystems is a complete, interconnected scale of incremental complexity. You should check out Rupert Sheldrake's work, "The Presence of the Past" for a detailed exploration of the nature of biological complexity. It seems that the interpenetration of "order" and "randomness" actually occurs at varying degrees at multiple scales.

Silentwolf, you wrote,
"Complexity has to do with how many simple units are stacked up and arranged in an ordered fashion to create a specific item. The higher the complexity, the more rigid and defined it becomes, with the possibilities for further complexity extremely limited. Complexity is about dedication to a specific task. The less complex the item is, the more possibilities that are open in complicating it to a point that it is modified for only one task."

It sounds to me like you are defining a different kind of complexity than blampow. Your complexity sounds like computer programming, or, again from the biological standpoint it sounds like stem cells, with the idea of "openness" and possibility in the undifferentiated state. Hence you are equating complexity with variety, which is somewhat different than the idea that complexity is a state of interconnected sameness and variety in some kind of feedback loop.

Another use of the word "complexity", as my old teacher liked to put it, is the way that certain behavioral tendencies arise in us, through multiple associations of "feeling-toned complexes." "Complex" can be a bad word in the world of psychology, and sometimes even the experience of being a human and fulfilling our basic urges. As eagle eyes points out, it's tempting to say "let's just keep it simple" The macro-complexity of phenomena that wolf and pow speak of is a safely philosophical definition, but the "complexity of behavior" is, to say the least, a complex subject.

[craazyman]

Top Ten Definitions of Complexity

Definition #10
Climbing down off your own cross.

Definition #9
Why the highest paid team in baseball can't beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Definition #8
Calculus III taught by that guy from East Germany who speaks English worse than a Pakastani cab driver.

Definition #7
Iraq: Figuring out "who started it."

Definition #6
When you're halfway through doing your business at the New Jersey Turnpike reststop and you realize there's no TP.

Definition #5
Convincing that guy in the feathered serpent head-dress who thinks he's a priest to climb down off the top of the pyramid and put that knife away.

Definition #4
Figuring out what the hell this means . . . smile.gif

Definition #3
Anything involving death and taxes.

Definition #2
What you see when you finally connect all the dots.

And Defintion of Complexity, Numero Uno . . .

Michael Jackson!