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p.61 I work on and with complexity. When I say I work on complexity, I mean that a large part of my intellectual activity... is concerned with how we can understand complex systems given a specification of their nature... and with how, given that form of understanding, we might develop a set of tools enabling us to grasp something useful about the nature of complex systems and the range of their possible future trajectories
p.62 Much of my work is concerned with urban systems
p.65 We should go beyond surfaces. Rather, it is that our understanding of complexity should inform us that the significant entrails into which we look to prophesy the future and record the past are likely themselves to be complex components rather than single variates... From a complexity perspective, any new state of the system is not caused by any single variate as measured, but by a combination of internal generation and external factors. Complex systems can change as a consequence of internal change, external change, or both together.
p.66 A key term here is "control parameter." ...Any prospect of agency in relation to systems depends absolutely on the possibility of first the existence and then the understanding of control parameter subsystems. The big question for any complexity science is: Can we get at these subsystems? Can we in any way understand them?
Cilliers has developed an important way of addressing this issue through his discussion of the use of models as devices that we use in an:
attempt to grasp the structure of complex systems. Complex systems are neither homogenous nor chaotic. They have structure, embodied in the patterns of interactions between the components (Cilliers, 2001)
specifying that in his account the notion of structure:
refers to the patterns of interaction in the system, and underplays a distinction between the structure on the one hand and the activities within that structure on the other. Structure is the result of action in the system, not something that has to exist in an a priori fashion. (Cilliers, 2001, original emphasis)
This dynamic and generated notion of structure... is very important.
p.66-67 There are four processes in a practical complexity science; indeed, I will argue that inductive complexity science consists of the application of these processes to complex systems. The processes are:
- Exploring, which involves both descriptive measurement of variate traces of complex systems and examination of the patterns generated by those measurements...
- Classifying, which in this context has two related components. One is the sorting of things into kinds... The other is identification, however temporary, of what constitutes meaningful boundaries...
- Interpreting, both measures... and "natural language" descriptions of qualitative form...
- Ordering: complexity is an inherently historical frame of reference. That means that things have to [be] sorted and positioned along a dimension of time...
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