Civilization and Complexity
[Supposing the fact that you are on a spaceship in some other far future millennium on a reconnaissance mission over a planet or an asteroid, how it will be known that whether any intelligent creature lives there or not ?Forget radio or audio sensors, forget all gadgets with an edge of a thousand years, the first thing that will strike the attention of the mission crew will be the orderly geometry of the terra firma over a disjoint region. The crew from a sufficient height will see rectangles and squares, triangles and circles, straight lines and regular curvatures. These simple geometrical features are bound to be there as for any civilization, other thing apart, had to work to the universal laws of gravitation, mechanics and energy. The basic laws of physics and chemistry and the relationship between simple mathematical structures and physical universe makes it possible to speculate on the physiography of a civilization and with more experience about its planetary and cultural evolution.]
Complexity is difficult to define but very east to point. Moreover, different facets of the same physical process might give rise to different level of complexity. Conversion of mass into energy in its theoretical possibility is exceedingly simple and straightforward in Einstein’s famous equation but the actual process is simply very complex. To an Arab trader of twelfth century, maintaining ledgers in a computer database might seem to be a exceedingly complex job than using Abacus and to a modern accountant, using Abacus to maintain his account will seem virtually impossible. With our intuitive feel of complexity we can readily agree on a heuristics of complexity :
Complexity of any system changes proportionally with the amount of intelligence embedded into it and complexity vanishes asymptotically with infinite information.
But it is very difficult to progress any further without providing a loose definition of complexity. Let us explore different situations, which might throw light on our subjective understanding of complexity and our objective comprehension to coding it. A musical symphony is complex, so is the mathematics underlying a nuclear explosion and so is the architecture and organization of human brain. Mathematics of general relativity is complex and so are n-dimensional partial differential equations. The emotional map of a human being is complex and so are the genetic coding of chromosome. Study of ocean currents and study of atmosphere are complex. An operating system is genuinely complex for a newbie whereas not as complex for an expert. Speaking a new language is increasingly complex initially but later simplicity itself. Out of these random examples, it is clear that there is something - a mixture of difficulty, awe, lack of understanding or partial understanding, infinite possibilities and selection or de-selection - all combining in varying degrees make us to say that the thing is complex. The noteworthy point is that in some cases the thing in itself may not be complex but interconnection, perspective, knowledge base, technical expertise, habit and behavioural conditioning make the thing complex.
From the domain of everyday idea of complexity, let us study some specific issues where complexity is not only a recurring theme but the whole system comes to a ridiculous oversimplification in spite of tall claim of specialization. Let us study the history of this biosphere with an idea of exploring how essence of complexity can be found to be intertwined in the fabric of any system.
[In the longest epic of human creation, The Mahabharata , an emperor after losing his empire was roaming in the forests of Middle India. In midst of that massive narration called Banaparba , when quizzed by a God in the form of a crane, the emperor Yudisthira gave a graphic description of biosphere in unparalleled prose : In the pot which is the cosmos itself, men, animals, plants and all living organism are being cooked under a fire which is Life itself and Mahakal or The Great Time is the puddle which has been doing the cooking since Eternity and it will be continued till Eternity. ]
In the graphic description , we find the metaphor of three fundamental , immutable entities of any physical system : Space, Time and Energy . The cosmos is the space, Time is the period as well as the agent of Natural Selection and Energy is what remains in a physical system after space and time. Physics of modern times has given a quantitative measure of these entities in addition to the grand insight into the qualitative properties of these entities and interrelationship and convertibility among them . Now, the question is whether the picture is simple? In the thing itself or rather the symbolic picture itself is simple enough but the concrete reality which the symbols try to represent is a complex phenomenon. On the other hand, the mathematics of quantum mechanics or general relativity are by no means simple but the basic aim is to give a simple, logical description of the physical reality via those symbols. Or in other words, the complexity of the symbols was needed to reduce the a priori complexity involved in the system. Unfortunately, any ambitious and honest branch of knowledge is bound to become exceedingly complex, owing to the demand of capturing a reality which spawns more complexity while being probed by our complex symbolic tools. Nature is infinite in variety and if it is so, search for knowledge is a vicious loop because with our experience as of now, physical reality sometimes resonate with our mind’s picture and sometimes mock irreverently. Complexity, in this way of reasoning, is a product of human mind and since the sense and neural apparatus of our consciousness is found to be remarkably complex through self-probing, there is always a chance of recursive error and in the end, a dilemma.
All matured sciences start in boundless enthusiasm, progress with a mixture of optimism and apprehension and end with a dilemma. The process is consistent with our idea of increasing recursion whenever complexity increases. Without much ado, we will frame our second heuristics on complexity :
All complex Systems will be inherently recursive, i.e., it will reference itself and the degree of recursion is directly proportional to the degree of complexity.
Our important corollary that immediately follows from the above heuristics is about the observer who is supposed to be the witness of the complexity of the system as well as its recursion. Mind, being a complex system will be highly recursive and what is that observer or does any observer exists? Physical sciences with increasing maturity will increasingly ask these questions and social sciences are already aware of the scope of these questions and philosophy, possibly being the oldest of sciences, had fought centuries old battle in the merciless field of epistemology. It had come out of these battles without answering and had finally left it unanswered. The question of observer torments physicists for when they are being asked about Big Bang singularity, the most respected among them say something : “Beyond Big Bang , Time has no physical significance”. In other words, at that point, complexity of the symbols asymptotically reaches a point where information contents of the system reaches infinite content and hence loses all complexity. It doesn’t imply that the system becomes clear or simple or easy but cessation of complexity in a system is the cessation of recursion itself which in other words is the non-existence of the system which the observer can only confirm. So in case of a system as great in scope and complexity as to encompass all observable observers, cessation of complexity is the cessation of all concerns and a Great Void - shunyatha emerges which is powerful to demolish all observers and hence all reference to it. Language is having a great recursive power with it and possibly the most complex system because language immediately creates observable observers and itself. So, the shunyatha cannot be expressed in language because a single symbol is enough to break the observers separate from the Void. It is on this background that the Ultimate Being of the Upanishad is “beyond language, beyond mind”.
[In a virtual reality lab, a scientist is making the Ultimate Virtual Reality Machine, which will become so perfect that it will pierce the wafer thin layer between reality a nd virtual reality. The system is getting complex day by day. People are tricked more often. The machine that simulates is getting increasingly adaptive and varied and intelligence is also increasing. Its linguistic capabilities are near to human. And one day, the scientist decided to give the final touch and the machine will be on far twenty-four hours. He landed into the console, pressed the buttons and became an observer. Twenty four hour later, he was missing, leaving a note : My life time achievement is a perfect hoax as well as a perfect success and also a perfect failure.]
When we look the growth of civilization in diffirent geo-climatic conditions, we find that all civilization increasingly became more complex due the emergence of delicate and recursive interdependence society is a special case of complexity intensive society. In next essays, it will be tried to elaborate on complexity intensive society on a more elaborate manner with comparative study of civilization.
