Book Review
Thinking in Complexity: The Computational
Dynamics of Matter,
Mind, and Mankind, 4th ed.
Klaus Mainzer
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg,
New York, 2004,
456 pp.
ISBN 3-540-00239-1
Reviewed by Anutosh Moitra
see all book reviews
 The science of complexity is likely to be
among the most salient features of the 21st
century, and Thinking in Complexity: Computational
Dynamics of Matter, Mind, and
Mankind is just as likely to be among the
most popular introductions to the topic.
Author Klaus Mainzer treats highly technical
materials related to descriptions of complexity
pervading science, engineering, societal
dynamics—and even ethics—with a
lucidity that is sure to captivate physicists
as well as the general public with a moderate
scientific background.
The central premise of the book regards complexity as emergent phenomena—
structure, chaos, phase transition, and so
on. These phenomena arise out of nonlinear
interactions augmented by dissipation
and constrained by a requirement of balance
between the two. Macroscopic patterns
curdle out of the soup of nonlinear
interactions between microscopic components
of a system. Mainzer extends this
concept to encompass such diverse subjects
as classical and quantum physics, dynamic
systems, evolution of life and organisms,
cellular automata and networks, artificial
intelligence, economics, and social and cultural
systems, and he finishes with a chapter
of speculations on how the science of
complexity will inform humankind’s roles,
responsibilities, and ethics in the future.
Readers of this book will enjoy Mainzer’s
exposition, which is based on a tight coupling
between classical and historical concepts
from Plato and Aristotle to modern,
mathematical and physical developments,
including relativity, chaos, and quantum
physics. Every chapter begins with a section
designed to orient the reader to the perspective
of philosophical developments through
the ages pertinent to the topic at hand. Readers
with the patience to read between the
lines will be rewarded with occasional gems
such as Mainzer’s speculation on a possible
correlation between a society’s development
of atomistic ideas and its possession of a
phonetic alphabet. The author takes pains to
point out essential differences between classical
science and the science of complexity.
Simple forecasting or prediction is neither
possible nor warranted in complexity studies.
One must execute all the minute steps of
a complex process to arrive at a particular
end result, which is just one of multiple possible
futures. The goal of thinking in complexity
is to better understand the process
and the system.
The chapters on societal-cultural complex
phenomena are particularly intriguing.
An economic system has at its microcomponent
level individuals with self-interests
and egoistic intentions. Aggregate market
behavior appears at a macro level. Dissipation
mechanisms are supplied to this nonlinear
interactive process by obvious
means—political or economic friction.
Mainzer extrapolates from this reasoning
the idea that ethics, in the sense of a way to
attain the greatest good, is not determined
by individual abilities or advantages but
evolves by a stream of complex, nonlinear,
and random processes. Thinking in Complexity is an outstandingly readable book.
Biography
Anutosh
Moitra is a principal engineer at
Boeing in Seattle, Washington, and works
in the field of computational fluid dynamics. |
