Sociology and Complexity Science blog

I am truly an embodied mind, a socio-biological concert of self

2012-01-22T11:07:00.001-05:00

In my Individual and Society course I typically spend the first couple weeks (amongst other things) grounding our understanding of human symbolic interaction in a wider scientific frame, by examining the scientific 'wonder' of how life emerged and how human beings came into existence--or, at least, our best current ideas on how things happened. From my perspective, it is hard to understand social interaction without an appreciation of its connection to our biological and environmental existence and the larger and smaller eco-complex systems in which we operate.

Anyway, to prepare for these lectures I often read general summaries of the latest developments in science, which give me useful ways to frame a lot of material in a quick way that focuses on the bigger picture. In preparation, one of my favorite books is Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.

One of the chapters that always gets me is on the emergence of life (Ch19) and its discussion of the incredible complex and self-organizing dance done by the mind-numbingly wide number and variety of living organisms that come together to make up the human body. I so easily forget that, as human beings, we are actually a collection of millions of smaller living and nonliving forms, from amino acids and proteins to mitochondria and bacteria and so forth.

Reading this material also reminds me that our conscious, brain-based cognition--that thing that calls itself I--has a certain astigmatism. Living daily life engaged in symbolic interaction, we forget that this thing we call our self (this self-reflexive, conscious I) is actually a small part of a very complex system that is comprised of millions of living organisms which, when combined in the right way, allow us to exist as a symbol making complex living system. In other words, i forget that a person, as a distinct form of structural organization, as a distinct type of living being, emerges out of, in part, a collection of smaller living beings.

I am truly an embodied mind, a socio-biological concert of self.

50 Years of Information Technology

2012-01-05T13:31:00.000-05:00

I recently ran across an excellent online historical overview of the last 50 years of information technology that I think is very well done. It was put together by Jacinda Frost. Check it out!

OnlineITDegree: 50 Years of Information Technology .

Proceedings of the Center for Complexity in Health

2012-01-05T12:19:00.001-05:00

The Center for Complexity in Health announces today the launching of their new white-paper outlet, the Proceedings of the Center for Complexity inHealth.

ThePCCH is an annual publication designed both to showcase and provide apublication outlet for some of the main avenues of research being conducted inthe Center for Complexity in Health, Robert S. Morrison Health and ScienceBuilding, Kent State University at Ashtabula. These areas includemedical professionalism, community health, allostatic load, school systems,medical learning environments and case-based modeling—all explored from acomplexity science perspective.

Thestudies published in the PCCH are generally comprehensive, in-depthexplorations of a topic, meant to provide a wider and more complete empiricaland theoretical backdrop for the specific studies that scholars involved in theCenter for Complexity in Health (CCH) regularly publish in various disciplinaryjournals. Such an outlet as the PCCH is useful given the conventions(e.g., page constraints and narrowness of focus) typical of most researchperiodicals, which make it very difficult to publish relatively completestatements on a topic in complex systems terms. While PCCH studiesaugment, acknowledge and cite CCH work published in other venues, each PCCHstudy is an original, distinct manuscript. Finally, PCCH studies arepeer-reviewed. Prior to publication each study is sent to colleagues forreview and criticism to ensure the highest quality of published proceedingspossible.

PCCHand all of its studies are the copyright © property of the Center forComplexity in Health, Kent State University at Ashtabula. Manuscripts published in the PCCH should be cited appropriately, as in thefollowing example:

Castellani, B., Rajaram, R., Buckwalter,JG., Ball, M., and Hafferty, F. 2012. “Place and Health as Complex Systems: A Case Studyand Empirical Test.” Proceedings of the Center for Complexity in Health,Kent State University at Ashtabula, 1(1):1-35.

Ourfirst publication is an in-depth exploration of several key issues incomplexity science and its intersection with the study of community health--CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.First, how does one determine the empirical utility of defining a community asa complex system? What unique insights emerge that could not otherwise beobtained? Second, how does one conduct a litmus test of one’s definitionof a community as a complex system in a systematic manner—something currentlynot done in the complexity science literature? Third, how does one usethe methods and techniques of complexity science to conduct such a litmus test,in combination with conventional methods such as statistics, qualitative methodand historical analysis? In our study we address all three questions, aspertains to a case study on the link between sprawl and community-level healthin a Midwestern county (Summit County, Ohio) in the United States and the 20communities of which it comprised.

Definitional Test of Complex Systems

2012-01-05T11:52:00.001-05:00

The DTCS is our attempt at an exhaustive tool for determining the extent to which a complex system's definition fits a topic. The DTCS is not, however, a standardized instrument. As such, we have not normed or validated it. Instead, it is a conceptual tool meant to move scholars toward empirically-driven, synthetic definitions of complex systems. To do so, the DTCS walks scholars through a nine-question, four-step process of review, method, analysis, and results---see Table 2 above.

The DTCS does not seek to determine if a particular case fits a definition; instead, it seeks to determine if a definition fits a particular case. The challenge in the current literature is not whether places are complex systems; as it would be hard to prove them otherwise. Instead, the question is: how do we define the complexity of a topic? And, does such a definition yield new insights? Given this focus, Question 9 of the DTCS functions as its negative test, focusing on three related issues: the degree to which a definition (a) is being forced or incorrectly used; (b) is not a real empirical improvement over conventional theory or method; or (c) leads to incorrect results or to ideas already known by another name. Scholars can modify or further validate the DTCS to examine its further utility. Let us briefly review the steps of the DTCS:

STEP 1: To answer the DTCS's initial five questions, researchers must comb through their topic's literature to determine if and how it has been theorized as a complex system. If such a literature does exist, the goal is to organize the chosen definition of a complex system into its set of key characteristics: self-organizing, path dependent, nonlinear, agent-based, etc. For example, if our review of the community health science literature, we identified nine characteristics. If no such literature exists, or if the researchers choose to examine a different definition, they must explain how and why they chose their particular definition and its set of characteristics, including addressing epistemological issues related to translating or transporting the definition from one field to another.

STEP 2: Next, to answer the DTCS's sixth question, researchers must decide how they will define and measure a definition and its key characteristics. For example, does the literature conceptualize nonlinearity in metaphorical or literal terms? And, if measured literally, how will nonlinearity be operationalized? Once these decisions are made, researchers must decide which methods to use. As we have already highlighted, choosing a method is no easy task. So, scientists (particularly those in the social sciences) are faced with a major challenge: the DTCS requires them to test the validity of their definitions of a complex system, but such testing necessitate them to use new methods, which many are not equipped to use. It is because of this challenge that, for the current project, we employed the SACS Toolkit, which we discuss next. First, however, we need to address the final two steps of the DTCS.

STEP 3: Once questions 1 through 6 have been answered, the next step is to actually conduct the test. The goal here is to evaluate the empirical validity of each of a definition's characteristics, along with the definition as a whole. In other words, along with determining the validity of each characteristic, it must be determined if the characteristics fit together. Having made that point, we recognize that not all complexity theories (particularly metaphorical ones) seek to provide comprehensive definitions; opting instead to outline the conditions and challenges. Nonetheless, regardless of the definition used, its criteria need to be met.

STEP 4: Finally, with the analysis complete, researchers need to make their final assessment: in terms of the negative test found in question 9 and the null hypothesis of the DTCS, to what extent, and in what ways is (or is not) the chosen definition, along with its list of characteristics, empirically valid and theoretically valuable?

Place and Health as Complex Systems: A Case Study and Empirical Test

2012-01-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

Back in the spring and summer of 2010 I posted a series of discussions about the need for complexity scientists to do a better job of comprehensively testing the empirical utility of their definitions--see, for example, one of the posting by clicking here. My main argument was that:

1. Most complexity science today explores only specific aspects of complex systems, such as emergence or network properties.
2. While only specific aspects are explored, these same scientists assume the full definition upon which they rely to be true in terms of their topic of study, but without empirical test.
3. The testing I recommend is not about determining if a topic is a complex system, which is useless as most things are complex systems. Instead, testing should focus on the empirical and theoretical utility of the definition used. In other words, does the definition yield new insights that could not otherwise have been obtained?
4. The testing I recommend should also link complexity method with definition. In other words, scientists need to explore how complexity methods (in particular, computational modeling, case-based modeling, qualitative method, etc) help to determine/demonstrate the empirical utility of defining a topic as a complex system.

At the end of my series of posts I noted that my colleagues and I were working on an article to address this issue, as pertains to the study of community health and school systems.

Well, a year and a half later, our study on community health is done--CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD IT. Here is the abstract:

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Abstract: Over the last decade, scholars have developed a complexities of place (COP) approach to the study of place and health. According to COP, the problem with conventional research is that it lacks effective theories and methods to model the complexities of communities and so forth, given that places exhibit nine essential "complex system" characteristics: they are (1) causally complex, (2) self-organizing and emergent, (3) nodes within a larger network, (4) dynamic and evolving, (5) nonlinear, (6) historical, (7) open-ended with fuzzy boundaries, (8) critically conflicted and negotiated, and (9) agent-based.While promising, the problem with the COP approach, however, is that its definition remains systematically untested and its recommended complexity methods (e.g., network analysis, agent-based modeling) remain underused. The current article, which is based on a previous abbreviated study and its ”sprawl and community-level health” database, tests the empirical utility of the COP approach. In our abbreviated study, we only tested characteristics 4 and 9. The current article conducts an exhaustive test of all nine characteristics and suggested complexity methods.

Method: To conduct our test we made two important advances: First, we developed and applied the Definitional Test of Complex Systems (DTCS) to a case study on sprawl—a ”complex systems” problem—to examine, in litmus test fashion, the empirical validity of the COP’s 9-characteristic definition. Second, we used the SACS Toolkit, a case-based modeling technique for studying complex system that employs a variety of complexity methods. For our case study we examined a network of 20 communities (located in Summit County, Ohio USA) negatively impacted by sprawl. Our database was partitioned from the Summit 2010: Quality of Life Project.

Results: Overall, the DTCS found the COP’s 9-characteristic definition to be empirically valid. The employment of the SACS Toolkit supports also the empirical novelty and utility of complexity methods. Nonetheless, minor issues remain, such as a need to define health and health care in complex systems terms.

Conclusions: The COP approach seems to hold real empirical promise as a useful way to address many of the challenges that conventional public health research seems unable to solve; in particular, modeling the complex evolution and dynamics of places and addressing the causal interplay between compositional and contextual factors and their impact on community-level health outcomes.

Steven Pinker versus Complexity Part II

2011-12-09T16:04:00.001-05:00

In a previous post--click here to see--I discussed Pinker's new book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined in terms of the interest it holds for a complexity scientists working in the social sciences.

The main issue I concentrated on was his argument that, not only has violence decreased over the longue durée of human history and, more specifically, the last 20 years of globalization-induced history, but that this decrease is scale-free, from attitudes on spanking children to wars. I took issue with this argument, pointing out that it is probably much more scale-dependent and context-sensitive than he makes the argument to be. (Again, remember, in the spirit of Foucault's approach to polemics, the point of my posting on Pinker's book is to think from a complexity perspective to see if it fosters new ideas, not to tear down the work of someone else.)

I spent the next few days thinking, and I have another issue regarding this notion of violence being relatively scale-free that I wanted to address: the fact that Pinker's argument is variable-based--a perspective that case-based complexity scientists such as Charles Ragin and David Byrne, amongst others, seek to avoid. (To read more about their views, see their latest edited book, The Sage Handbook of Case-Based Methods.)

Byrne's work, for example, specifically focuses on the intersection of complexity science and case-based method. The premise upon which his work is based, whilesimple enough, is ground-breaking: in the social sciences, cases are the methodological equivalent ofcomplex systems; or, alternatively, complex systems are cases and thereforeshould be studied as such. With thispremise, Byrne adds to the complexity science literature an entirely newapproach to modeling complex systems, alongside the current repertoire of agent(rule-based) modeling, dynamical (equation-based) modeling, statistical(variable-based) modeling, network (relational) modeling, and qualitative(meaning-based) method.

If you think about it, complex systems cannot be studied as a collection of variables. How, for example, do you study the adjacency or proximity (dissimilarity) matrix of a set of variables? Systems are made up of agents and structures and environmental forces (top-down, bottom-up, and any other direction you want to consider) which, together, are best conceptualized as cases: configurations of variables that, together, form a self-organizing emergent whole that is more than the sum of its parts, and is nonlinear, dynamic, path (context) dependent and evolving across time/space. Ragin goes even further: stop thinking of variables as variables; they are sets. Violence, for example, is not a variable. Violence is a set--fuzzy or crisp--into which cases represent degrees of membership. For example, thinking of Pinker's study, "war in the 1800s in Europe" is a case, along with another case such as "war in China in the 1800s." Both cases could be placed in the set "macro-level violence through war." Membership in the case could, at least initially, be defined in terms of basic rates, as Pinker uses, or converted into boolean or fuzzy set membership.
But the key point here is that they are different: they are each a case, a different, context-dependent case, which one will explore, in terms of their respective configurations, to find similarities and differences; and it is this comparative approach that will draw out the context-dependent causal similarities and differences amongst these cases. For example, in relation to Pinker's work, one may find that violence has gone down in both cases, but the reasons for the decrease in violence is different, based on differences in configuration.

Why is something like this important? Consider policy recommendations. Insensitivity to configurational differences, context and, ultimately complexity is the failure of much policy--see, for example, Applying Social Science by Byrne.

Following this argument, violence, as a complex system, reconfigured at multiple levels of scale, can be defined as a set, comprised of multiple sub-sets, each representing a type and scale of violence, from the macro to the micro. Each set is comprised of cases, which are configurations, which take into consideration context and difference. Such an approach allows one to talk about violence in a much more sophisticated way. For example, one could show how violence is increasing and decreasing, for example over time; contradictory trends. The macro-level violence of war in Europe during the 20th century is not the same thing as the macro-level violence of war in China or Africa or South America or between hunter and gathering tribes or war amongst smaller empires. They constitute different cases, different forms of macro-level violence. Studying violence this way allows us to ask much more specific questions: which forms of government or social organization in which particular contexts, for example, lead to less war? Which forms of government or social organization in which particular contexts lead to less micro-level, face-to-face violence? And, so forth.

complexity art "Two Duche Bags; Or, Toast This"

2011-12-09T11:32:00.001-05:00

This is a painting i recently completed called Two Douche-bags; Or, Toast This! It is a comedic homage to jerks everywhere who, by definition, think they are more incredible then they actually are. It is also a good example of my exploring complexity through assemblage, as it is the same set of integrated images of my nephew and brother-in-law on both side, except the one on the right was inverted and developed to become something different.

Eames Documentary

2011-12-09T09:50:00.001-05:00

I am a huge fan of the work of Charles and Ray Eames and have been waiting for their complexity science, postmodern equivalent. Anyway, my wife sent me this link to a new documentary on them. It looks great:http://www.midcenturia.com/2011/10/eames-architect-and-painter-film.html

Steven Pinker Versus Complexity

2011-11-27T09:56:00.008-05:00

The evolutionary psychologist, Steven Pinker has published a new book: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. I came across a review of the book in the Dec/Jan 2012 edition (Volume 18, Issue 4) of Book Forum, which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoy. It is a great periodical. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE REVIEW

I decided to quickly blog on the book because, given that this is a blog about complexity, I think Pinker’s book presents an interesting idea that works along with my previous posting about Andrew Wilson's website on complexity and psychology.

In a very ridiculous nutshell, Pinker's basic argument is that humans have progressed to a place of less violence, thanks in large measure to cultural and social forces impinging upon the better half of our evolved nature; "the better angles of our nature," as Lincoln famously stated.

Pinker's study has two historical foci: (1) the longue durée of human history and, more specifically, (2) the last 20 years of globalization-induced history.

Such a provocative thesis often requires careful review and critique. So, it is not a matter of Pinker simply being right or wrong. (As a side note, "Pinker, Right or Wrong?" seems to be the nature of most debates I have seen on the book, with little thinking in the grey area of, "hey, just how well does the model fit?")

As a complexity scientist, I am primarily interested in his notion that the world-wide decrease in violence has a scale-free character to it. Pinker argues that, from macro-level wars to micro-level views on spanking children, the world has become a less violent place both over the longue durée of human history and, more specifically, over the last 20 years of globalization-induced history.

I think further exploration of this argument is a great dissertation or study for a complexity scholar in history, anthropology, epidemiology or applied statistics to examine.

A note on method: Pinker is clear that his focus is physical violence, not violence as a metaphor for political, cultural or economic oppression. Violence as physical violence. His method of analysis is rather simplistic: rates (ratios expressed over time), computed as a basic prevalence--people harmed by violence divided by the total population. There are lots of epidemiological issues that emerge when one thinks of this approach, but we will confine ourselves to just two:

One of the immediate issues that emerges is that, as the world gets larger, large-scale violent events such as wars, by definition, decrease in their rate of harm. If there are several billion people on the planet and a world war emerges where several million people are killed, this comes across as not as bad as the Roman empire killing people in a much smaller world. Is it true, then, that, at a macro-level scale, we live in a less violent world? What, for example, if we used a network analysis approach and looked at degrees of separation. Even in a world of several billion people, are humans less separated from violence than they were 2 thousand years ago? Also, is there, perhaps, some sort of tipping point here, where the world, past a certain population threshold, becomes too large at the macro-level for people to inflict an increasing rate of violence?

And, as another issue, what about regional scale--here I am thinking of path dependency issues in terms of different complex socio-political systems bounded by particular geographies? Should one's focus be broken down into regions? For example, if one just studied Europe, would Pinker's thesis hold--particularly in terms of his argument that smart governments, not too corrupt and reasonably democratic lead to less violence? Or, is it that, at smaller levels of scale, more democratic government leads to less daily violence in the criminal justice system, people-to-people interactions, discriminatory violence, etc. But, at larger scales, particularly country to country, violence through war has not decreased? It is true that over the last 20 years macro-level violence has decreased. But, I am just not sure what to make of that phenomenon. Anyway, these are the sorts of questions that emerged in my head as I worked through Pinker's ideas.

Bottom line: I think Pinker has an interesting thesis, but I think a lot more work needs to be done before it is embraced. In particular, I think his topic is far too complex to be analyzed in terms of simple rates. It needs to be grasped in complex systems terms and truly examined for its scale-free character and regional context. My initial response is that Pinker's findings are more scale-dependent and context-sensitive than they initially seem. But, without conducting a study, it is nothing more than a conjecture on my part.

Psychology & Complexity Science Website

2011-11-13T09:29:00.004-05:00

I recently came across this website via one of the Santa Fe listserves to which I belong. It is called: Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists A brave attempt to think out loud about theories of psychology until we get some

Here is how Andrew Wilson, one of the team of psychologists running this blog, explains their focus:

He studies "the perceptual control of action, with a special interest in learning. I had the good fortune to be turned onto the work of James Gibson, the dynamical systems approach and embodied cognition during my PhD at Indiana University. This non-representational, non-computational, radical embodied cognitive science is at odds with the dominant cognitive neuroscience approach, but provides an over-arching theoretical framework that I believe psychology is otherwise missing. My plan for my activity here is to review the theoretical and empirical basis for this approach, to organise my thoughts as I develop my research programme."

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I just think this website is great! While my doctorate is in medical sociology, my masters is in clinical psychology, and my early research was in addiction. I love this website because it is pushing hard to move psychology in the direction of systems and complexity. For example, the idea that cognition is restricted to the brain (along with basic notions of a computational or representational mind) or that our embodied mind (which also has emotions, don't forget those things as well, along with intuitions, meaning making, immune system intelligence, etc) is not an emergent phenomenon, developmentally and bio-psychologically progressed through our symbolic interactions with our sociological and ecological systems, is (pun intended) mind-numbing. Just a little plug for symbolic interaction (going all the way back to Mead, Blumer, etc, etc) and neo-pragmatism (a good example is Rorty): these scholars, while not getting it always entirely right, have been pushing these ideas since the turn of the previous century and, in mass, for the past several decades!

anyway, check out the website.

Complexity, Professionalism, and the Hidden Curriculum

2011-09-08T08:54:00.003-04:00

Just got back from the The Association for Medical Education in Europe Conference. AMEE "is a worldwide organisation with members in 90 countries on five continents. Members include educators, researchers, administrators, curriculum developers, assessors and students in medicine and the healthcare professions."

We did a pre-conference workshop on complexity method as applied to the topics of medical professionalism and the hidden curriculum. It went very well. My co-conspirators in presenting were:

1) Jim Price (Institute of Postgraduate Medicine, Brighton & Sussex Medical School, UK)
2) Susan Lieff (Centre for Faculty Development, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Canada)
3) Frederic Hafferty (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA)
4) John Castellani (Johns Hopkins University, USA)

We also had two student presentations using social networks to analyze medical education:

O B Nikolaus*, R Hofer, W Pawlina, B Castellani, P K Hafferty, F W Hafferty. “Social networks and academic help seeking among first year medical students.” The Association for Medical Education in Europe Annual Conference, Vienna Austria 2011.

Ryan E Hofer, O Brant Nikolaus, Wojciech Pawlina, Brian Castellani, Philip K Hafferty, Frederic Hafferty. “Peer-to-peer assessments of professionalism: A time dependent social network perspective.” The Association for Medical Education in Europe Annual Conference, Vienna Austria 2011

Overall, a very successful conference.

Kent State University at Ashtabula Commerical

2011-06-30T21:19:00.002-04:00

Check it out! i am in a commercial for our campus, Kent State University at Ashtabula. Very Cool! And for those in Northeastern Ohio, consider attending our campus.

CLICK HERE to see the commercial on YouTube

Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems

2011-06-20T09:25:00.002-04:00

This coming weekend i am going to the Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems in Boston. My colleagues Jürgen and Christina Klüver have put together a session on complex social systems.

Our session is Monday June 27th Evening Parallel Session 1/ Chair: Christina Kluever
Workshop: Mathematical Aspects of Social and Cognitive Complexity

Jürgen Klüver: Meaning, Information, and the Understanding of Ambiguity

Brian Castellani and Rajeev Rajaram: Social Complexity Theory: A Mathematical Outline

Dwight Read: Cultural Kinship as a Computational System: From Bottom-Up to Top-down Forms of Social Organization

Robert Reynolds and Yousof Gawasmeh: Evolving Heterogeneous Social Fabrics for the Solution of Real valued Optimization Problems Using Cultural Algorithms

Christina Stoica-Kluever: Solving problems of project management with a Self Enforcing Network (SEN)

Here is a program guide Wiki, complete with the list of presenters and abstracts of their presentations. CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PROGRAM

Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems

2011-06-20T09:07:00.002-04:00

This coming weekend i am going to the Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems in Boston. My colleagues Jürgen and Christina Klüver have put together a session on complex social systems. I will say more in my next post. Here i just wanted to advertise the conference. It has some amazing people attending.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday June 13, 2011

World Scientific Leaders to Gather in Boston for Conference on the Complex World Around Us

Cambridge, MA --- The Eighth International Conference on Complex Systems, hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), is coming to Boston June 26-July 1. ICCS 2011 is expected to bring together more than 400 researchers from around the world. They will be presenting more than 300 papers on topics ranging from food (Cuisines as Complex Networks) to dealing with destructive cults.

CNN Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer David Bohrman, inventor of the Magic Wall and other CNN data visualization techniques, will give the opening conference reception presentation Sunday evening, June 26.

“Papers such as those presented at this conference provide a logical approach that helps policymakers predict results in fields ranging from healthcare to Middle East unrest to crowd control,” says Yaneer Bar-Yam, NECSI President. “The approach is a useful and much needed aid to decision-making.”

Among the many noteworthy presentations:

The Herbert A. Simon Award will be presented to banquet speaker Thomas Schelling, author of “Micromotives and Macrobehavior,” Nobel Laureate and Emeritus Professor of the University of Maryland and Harvard University.

"Model Error, Convexity and Skewness" is the topic of New York University Polytechnic Institute Distinguished Professor Nassim Taleb, best known as the author of "The Black Swan."

David Gondek of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson’s Research Center and a major force behind the new Jeopardy champion, Watson, will talk on machine intelligence algorithms.

Professor Jerome Kagan, Daniel and Amy Starch Research Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at Harvard University, is one of the world's leading psychologists. He discovered behaviors in infants that predict behaviors later in life.

Princeton University Professor John Hopfield, one of the world’s foremost authorities on neural networks, will be presenting "Animal Behavior and Emergent Computational Dynamics," a paper describing how animal brains employ collective neuron behavior to achieve ‘thinking.’

Dr. Stephen Wolfram, distinguished scientist, inventor and business leader. Dr. Wolfram founded his own complexity science research organization and is the author of "A New Kind of Science," which advocates for computational systems to explain complexity in nature.

Tel Aviv University’s Professor Eshel Ben Jacob will speak about how bacteria collectively solve problems by forming a kind of multicellular brain, and will show movies of the bacteria solving optimization problems that cannot be solved by modern computers.

Professor Kunihiko Kaneko of Tokyo University will speak about the principles behind the evolution of multiple levels of biological organization: molecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems.

The Santa Fe Institute's Distinguished Professor and former President Geoffrey West’s presentation, “The Complexity, Simplicity, and Unity of Living Systems from Cells to Cities: Towards a Quantitative, Unifying Framework of Biological and Social Structure, Organization and Dynamics," describes in mathematical terms how cities and other large social structures are merely 'large organisms', and the implications for growth, development, and potential collapse.

MIT's Human Dynamics Laboratory's Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, DARPA Internet Grand Challenge winner and serial entrepreneur, will be presenting "How Social Networks Shape Human Behavior."

Boston University Professor of Physics, Chemistry and Bioengineering Eugene Stanley is a pioneer in interdisciplinary science and econophysics. His paper, "Economic Fluctuations and Statistical Physics: Quantifying Extremely Rare Events with Applications to the Present World Crisis," explores financial crises as extensions of normal events and not outliers.

The New England Complex Systems Institute is based in Cambridge, MA. A pioneer in the field of complex systems science, NECSI addresses questions previously considered to be outside of the realm of scientific inquiry. Its research draws on foundations from mathematics, physics, and computer science to solve pressing problems in such areas as economics, healthcare, education, military conflict, ethnic violence, and international development. Its goal is to expand the boundaries of knowledge and to solve problems of science and society.

The conference runs from June 26 to July 1. Details and registration (including press registration) are at www.necsi.edu.

Wall Eye Gallery presents Pedaling Art (20 May 6:00pm to 11:00pm)

2011-05-08T10:59:00.003-04:00

TRICYCLE by Brian Castellani

For local 'clevelandites,' come see one of my latest assemblages (a sneak peek of part of it shown above) at the Wall Eye Gallery (details above) dealing with my love of bicycles! It should be a great show!

sorry for taking so long to post

2011-05-08T10:39:00.003-04:00

Hi Folks! Cowboy Bri here! Sorry it has been a while since i last posted anything worth reading or viewing, but complexity ideas, as you know, do not come easy. The past four months I have been working on a series of painting and photo assemblages as well as working with my friend and colleague, Rajeev Rajaram, on a mathematical outline of the SACS Toolkit--our case-based, methodological framework for modeling complex systems. This summer I plan on posting extensively on the SACS Toolkit and on my latest round of art. Hope you find them interesting!

The Margaret t-shirt series

2010-11-22T12:43:00.009-05:00

CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR MARGARET SERIES T-SHIRTS

My wife, Maggie--who is a member of the art and science factory team--is known by friends and family for her humorous turn of a phrase or otherwise funny quips. A common response made by others to her is, "You have to put that on a t-shirt!" So we did. Or, at least, we are now starting to do so.

Our first t-shirt is "the stupidity is killing me," which is our laugh-out-loud reaction to the increasing inability of people to come together to discuss, address or solve even the simplists of problems; or, alternatively, the failure of people to act in a civilized, caring manner. Is it asking too much?
CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR MARGARET SERIES T-SHIRTS

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2010-09-01T12:50:00.002-04:00

I recently ran across some very interesting art work by James Moss, who describes himself as an "Artist/Educator - integrating science and spirit through the interconnected phenomena of emergent complexity, self-organization, self-similarity, and consciousness, to reveal a larger unifying fractal paradigm underlying individual and cosmic evolution."

What I like about his work is his attempt to transfer the pictoral representation of mathematical dynamical systems--fractals, etc--onto the canvas, rather than simply generating them via computer. Paint always has the element of time involved, because it simply takes time to paint, and so the images always come across richer and more interesting--at least that is my bias.

To check out his work, go to his blog, Metamorphoptics

Complexity Theory, Managerial Science and the Problems of Definitions

2010-08-29T13:52:00.004-04:00

This post continues my discussion about the challenges associated with how one goes about testing the validity and utility of the particular definition of a complex social system one uses.

I ran across an excellent article in the journal Educational Management, Administration and Leadership by Keith Morrison, titled Complexity Theory, School Leadership and Management: Questions for Theory and Practice [2010, 38(3):374-393]. Morrison has written extensively about the utility of complexity science for the field of education, primarily in terms of leadership issues.

What makes the article so good is that it rigorously deconstructs how the management literature fails to effectively distinguish between the metaphorical versus prescriptive versus descriptive use of the term complex system. Too often (and I personally think almost always) scholars in the management and leadership literature (particularly in the field of education) write about a phenonomena such as autopoiesis as if they can move back and forth between their various uses of the term. For example, in the same argument they will treat autopoeisis as something that is real, something you can cause to happen, or just a really cool way to see things. Or, one finds these scholars saying such things as "Principals needs to teach their faculty to think of their schools as complex, self-organizing systems, because schools are alive and autopoietic, so that they can create a nonlinear learning environment." What does such a sentence mean? Can a school be alive? Can you create a nonlinear working environment? What would such an environment be--one where lots of work leads to little change; or little work leads to sudden great change?

The above sentence is the type of conflated intellectual sloppiness that Morrison addresses in his article. I hihgly recommend reading it.

making definitions of complexity clear

2010-08-22T11:18:00.004-04:00

This post continues my discussion about (1) the need for researchers to be clear about the definition of complexity they use and (2) to make sure that they test or demonstrate that the system they are studying actually meets the criteria of their definition.

As I have said in previous postings, I am not advocating a strict realist definition of complexity, such that the definitions researchers use and then test have to reveal the fundamental reality of the object they are studying as complex. One can use complexity as a metaphor (as in the case of postmodern complexity), as a proactive concept (as in the case of the leadership literature) or as a empirically useful way of describing something (as in the case of the natural and artificial sciences). What I am saying, however, is that one's definition should be rigorously applied.

My second and related point is that we need rigor in our definitions to bring together the otherwise disparate areas of study in complexity science. Synthesis in complexity science will not come through the construction of a singular definition. Instead, synthesis will come from researchers empirically, proactively, or metaphorically demonstrating that the definitions they use form a gestalt--a whole that is greater than its parts. And, it should be clear to readers and fellow researchers how the components of one's definition go together.

As a final point, researchers need to be careful that they do not move in and out of empirical to proactive to metaphor in their definitions. To me, this type of intellectual slippage is one of the major ways that scholars in the social sciences and humanities get into trouble with their usage of complexity science.

For example, a scholar will empirically demonstrate how a particular system of study is self-organizing. With this success, the scholar will proceed to make a whole bunch of additional definitional assumptions that the proof of self-organization means the system is also agent-based, network-like in structure, and nonlinear (one of the most misused mathematical terms by social scientists and humanities scholars). The term nonlinear, for example, is almost always used in a metaphorical way by social scientists and humanities scholars, to suggest that a social system is messy, not easily managed or controlled or not easily understood via statistical method. In actuality, nonlinear means that the system or, more specifically, the equation or equations used to understand a system are such that their output is not directly proportional to their input. In other words, when the term 'nonlinear' is used in a realist sense, it means that the system being studied and the factors of which it is comprised cannot be written as a linear combination. Furthermore, as a system, these equations are therefore usually impossible to solve, except through computational methods that provide proximate solutions; and the problems are often unstable, that is chaotic, operating near chaos, etc. So, if the researcher has empirically demonstrated that a system is self-organizing but uses the term nonlinear in a metaphorical manner (which may be close to its correct usage but not quite), then the researcher is really causing definitional confusion through a lack of rigor and clarity. For such a researcher to proceed to response to critics (who are rightfully confused) by arguing that the lack of clarity in his or her work is a function of studying complexity--when it is really a failure in the usage of some of the components in her or his definition--is to perpetuate rather than solve the problem they are working so hard to address.

Defining and Test Complex Social Systems

2010-08-18T08:16:00.005-04:00

As regular readers of this blog know, I am currently working on a community health study with my colleague, Galen Buckwalter, wherein we are testing to see if the complex system definition used by current researchers has any degree of cohesion and if this definition, in its totality, applies to the typical community of study. I am also working on a study of public school systems with my brother, John Castellani, who is at Johns Hopkins, to see if and how best a public school system can be conceptualized as a complex social system.

In my literature review, I came across the following article. In the 2010, Volume 70Issue 10 edition of Social Science and Medicine, Keshavarz, Nutbeam, Rowling and Khavarpour published their empirical article, “Schools as Social Complex Adaptive Systems: A New Way to Understand the Challenges of Introducing the Health Promoting Schools Concept."

The article fits with my recent discussions about definitions because the goal of the article is to determine the “relevance and usefulness of the concept of ‘complex adaptive systems’ as an approach to better understanding ways in which health promoting school interventions could be introduced and sustained” (p. 1468).

To arrive at their definition of a complex social system, they reviewed the literature. For them, a complex social system—which they call social complex adaptive system—is comprised of a key set of characteristics, which they list on page 1468 of the article. I will not review these characteristics here. Suffice to say, they did what I have been talking about: they outlined a definition and proceeded to use empirical data to determine if their system of study (a school system) meets the criteria of their definition. They used two data sources: public school reports and qualitative interviews.

Using this data, they went through each component of their definition to see if it provided them an empirically relevant and useful way of thinking about their educational system of study. Related, their ultimate goal was to see if the utility of each component lent itself to an improved way of understanding how health promotion programs should be implemented. In other words, if schools can be adequately framed as complex systems, then what does each component of their definition add to their understanding of how health promotion should be effectively accomplished.

In addition to their attempt to empirically examine the utility of their definition, toward the end of their article they outline many of the issues I have been discussing lately. On pages 1472-1473, they state:

"Utilising complex adaptive theory to guide enquiry into a discrete phenomenon (such as a health promoting school) is a challenging task, in part due to the complexity of the theory itself, and in part because of the continuing uncertainty on a clear definition of complex adaptive systems (Rickles et al., 2007; Wallis, 2008). While there has been a recognition of complexity, and steady increase in the use of complexity theory in the study of health care and public health interventions (Keshavarz, Huges, & Khavarpour, 2005; Resnicow & Page, 2008; Shiell et al., 2008) there has been relatively little critical analysis of the concept, and no single and clear account of the components of complex adaptive systems theory and how these components relate to each other (Dooley, 1997; Rickles et al., 2007; Wallis, 2008). Furthermore, as Chu et al. (2003) argue there are few experimental studies that test complexity theories, and there exists even less research into practice informed by the insights that might be provided by complexity science. Correspondingly, application of a complex adaptive systems framework to a social system requires considerable caution, but suggests the need for continued exploration."

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What makes the article by Keshavarz, Nutbeam, Rowling and Khavarpour even more important to read is that it was followed by a Commentary by Tamsin Haggis, who provided her own very sympathetic yet useful and critical reading of their article. In turn, the first authors were allowed to published their response to Haggis' critique.

Rather than make a case for which argument I think wins out in the end, I recommend others go read the articles and decide for themselves. Actually, I think both sides have some important points to make, and it is not really a matter of who wins, but how their arguments work together to help make some important advances.

Complexity Art at the SF MOMA

2010-07-25T12:22:00.006-04:00

Hey everyone,

This past year I wrote the introduction to Damon Soule's section of a new book he and his group of fellow artists published, called Further.

As I have discussed in previous blogs, I think the work of Damon Soule and colleagues is part of a larger art movement I call complexity art. Obviously, I place my own art in this larger movement as well. (click here for some more blogging on the topic)

Here is a bit on a book signing Soule and colleagues had at the San Francisco MOMA.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE

SACS Toolkit and Baltimore County School System

2010-07-14T11:04:00.004-04:00

My brother and I are at the International Sociological Association, presenting our paper on the SACS Toolkit and its application to the study of Baltimore County Public Schools as a complex system. The conference is in Goteborg, Sweden with the RC51 (Sociocybernetics) gang. If you want a copy of our paper, go to my Center for Complexity in Health Website. It will be uploaded by Thursday, the 15th.

Tack

How Should Complex Systems Be Tested?

2010-06-13T14:13:00.007-04:00

This post extends a conversation I began on 19 May 2010, titled testing the validity of complex systems. This is the fifth post on this topic since then.

The argument I am making is that researchers need to do some sort of complete (holistic) test of their topic, to: (1) make sure that the definition of a complex system they are using applies; and(2) make sure that their topic fits this definition.

The question I want to address here is how should such holistic testing be done?

Again, this will take a bit of blogging, but it seems to me that testing can be thought of at two basic levels.

1. Deep/Thorough Testing: The first and most rigorous level would require one or more studies devoted to a sort of deep or thorough testing to determine if one's definition of a complex system applies to a give topic and, related, if that topic can be validly and reliably called a complex system.

This first type of testing is the focus of the community health science study I am doing with my colleague, Galen Buckwlater. For the last couple years, researchers have been explicitly or implicitly treating communities and their health as if these things are complex social systems. Our research question is: is such an assumption valid and reliable? In other words, can one assume that the commonly used definition of a complex system applies to the study of communities and their health and, conversely, can communities and their health be called a complex system?

To conduct this type of test, we did the following. (A) First, we reviewed the literature to determine what the common definition of a complex system is that researchers use. (B) Next, we found a case study that represented the average community researchers typically study and collected data on it. (C) Then, we took each descriptor from the common definition of health and ran a series of tests. For example, a commonly held assumption is that communities are self-organizing. To determine if this is true, we examined if the conception of self-organizing used by these researchers to determine exactly what they mean by this concept. Then, we empirically tested this concept of self-organization to see if our community actually engaged in this behavior. In total, we ran ten individual testsn on the commonly used definition of complex system used in the community health science literature. It was a tremendous amount of work. And, in the process we used a wide arsenal of techniques, including hierarchical regression, curvilinear regression, correlation, k-means cluter analysis, the self-organizing map neural net algorithm, network analysis, qualitative case-based comparative method and computational (agent-based) modeling.

One can think of this first type of testing as helping a field along by increasing the rigor of its concepts and its knowledge of the type of complex system it it studying.

2. Shallow/Preliminary Testing. The second type of testing is what we might expect all researchers to do before and during the process of modeling a particular topic as a complex system. In this case, one would begin by explicitly outlining the particular definition of a complex system one is using. Then, one would conduct some type of preliminary tests to determine if one's topic is, indeed, a complex system.

The testing in this second case is likewise rigorous but it is more background work. Also, it is something that takes place before and during the model building process. The quality of one's results is something that is reported in the methods section of a study.

I have used this type of testing in a couple studies we have done. The first one was my research with Fred Hafferty on medical professionalism and the second was the book on sociology and complexity science that I wrote with Fred as well. In both instances we articulated the definition of a complex system we were using and tested to see if our topic fit it reasonably well.

This second type of testing involves the development of what we call a meta-model, and it is one of the first steps in the SACS Toolkit modeling process--this is the new method Fred and I developed for studying complex systems. SACS stands for sociology and complexity science. For more about our method, see our BOOK

Developing a meta-model (a model of one's model) allows researchers to determine, right from the beginning, if their definition of a complex system is rigorous and if their topic is (empirically speaking) a complex system. In addition to the development of a meta-model, the SACS Toolkit has a total of nine built-in procedures that researchers are expected to use to explore their definition and topic in complex systems terms. My brother John and I are writing a paper on how the SACS Toolkit does this and will be presenting it this summer in Sweden at the International Sociological Association Meetings. I should be done with the paper in the next couple weeks and will post it on here. I also plan to blog more about the SACS Toolkit so that readers can get a better sense of the method.

Complexity Definitions Need to Best Tested as a Whole

2010-06-08T07:59:00.005-04:00

This post extends a conversation I began on 19 May 2010, titled testing the validity of complex systems. This is the fourth post on this topic since then.

Okay, I am getting a bit closer to what I am trying to say about testing. When I say definitions needs to be empirically grounded and tested I mean that the entire definition, as a whole, needs to be empirically grounded and tested. To date, most empirical inquiry in the complexity sciences focuses on parts of the complexity science definition. Researchers study networks or they study dynamics or they study emergence, autopoiesis, self-organization (a.k.a swarm behavior) and so forth. Two things are held as true in these studies. First, that the things being studied are actually complex systems. Second, that the part of the complexity science definition the researcher is studying naturally integrates into the larger complex systems scheme of things. My questions is, how do you know both of these things are true about the topic one is studying?

One way I think researchers can be sure is to do a complete (holistic) test of their topic, (1) to make sure that the definition of a complex system they are using applies and (2) to make sure that their topic fits this definition. For example, if researchers assume that a complex system is self-organizing, emergent, comprised of a large network of interacting agents and open-ended, then these researchers should have a series of tests to validate if this definition (in its entirety) applies to the topic they are studying. Alternatively, such a complete set of tests makes sure that the topic these researchers are studying is actually a complex system, or at least the type of complex system they seek to study.

Operationalizing metaphor

2010-06-07T19:53:00.004-04:00

This post extends a conversation I began on 19 May 2010, titled testing the validity of complex systems.

I my last two posts I've argued that one should have a way to determine empirically if the topic one is studying is actually a complex system. Related, I've argued that the definitions complexity scientists use to identify a topic as a complex system should likewise be empirically grounded and tested. In this post, I want to comment further why I think doing such things is important.

Two words: operationalizing metaphor. I have read far too many articles and books in the last couple years that are little more than undisciplined, metaphorical labyrinths verging on the same sort of nonsense that took place at the high point of the postmodern movement in the 1990s. I've read articles talking about turning one's business firm or one's educational system into a self-organizing, emergent, agent-based network in order to optimize profits or learning, as if one could make a social system self-organize. Is that not contradictory? How does one make a system self-organize, given that a self-organizing system is one where there is no guiding external force controlling the systems's organization? Or, how about pushing one's business to the edge of chaos in order to profit from its nonlinear dynamics? What does something like this mean? Do these writers really understand what nonlinear (which, last I looked is a mathematical term) means? Related, what is nonlinear management? Or, how about talking about any and all social change as if they were the product of tipping points? When I hear such discussions I am reminded of the first time I heard a politician talk about "deconstructing" some political process to get to the bottom of things. Worse, when I hear such complexity science nonsense, I fear the next Sokal Hoax. Remember how the physicist, Alan Sokal, submitted his completely nonsensical postmodern text to the periodical, Social Text, and got it accepted, only to reveal later that the entire text was garbage. Sokal's hoax was done with complete seriousness. He was not trying to say that postmodernism was useless. Instead, he felt that postmodernism had some important things to offer, but only by increasing its rigor. I'm not saying that some of the complexity science literature has reached this point. But, it is close. If complexity science is going to make important inroads into mainstreet science, many of its new practitioners need to be more empirically rigorous and discerning in the definitions they use and the topics they call complex systems.

Is what you are studying a complex system?

2010-06-07T19:24:00.005-04:00

This post extends a conversation I began on 19 May 2010, titled testing the validity of complex systems.

My basic argument is that we simply too often assume that any topic we are studying is a complex system simply because we say so--regardless of the definition we are using.

Now I know that the definition of a complex system is encyclopedic, such that many definitions exist. And, of course, I am not arguing for a single standard by which all topics should be judged worthy of being called a complex system.

But, I am arguing that, regardless of the definition researchers use, they should have some way of testing their topic to see if and how it acts like a complex system.

For example, pretend one assumes that complex systems have the following characteristcs: they are self-organizing, emergent, operating near chaos, and agent-based. Definition in hand, one then goes out to study a local community, a formal organization or some social network. Before one begins, however, shouldn't there be some set of preliminary tests done; some sort of way to determine if what one is studying is actually self-organizing, emergent, etc? Related, what would one look for to determine if such characteristics exist? What tests would one use? What methods would be relevant to conduct these tests? And, what if one finds that one or more of these characteristics is lacking, or only exists in a modified form? What then?

Again, I am not saying that one test or definition fits all. But, I am saying that the definitions complexity scientst use to identify, model and study various topics as complex systems should have a bit more empirical rior. These definitions should be tested and held up to empirical validity and reliability. One should be able to talk intelligently about what one means when one is calling something a complex system.

testing the validity of complex systems

2010-05-19T09:31:00.003-04:00

I could be wrong here, and I am not entirely sure about the argument I am making, but it seems to me that much of the work being done in complexity science has yet to reach a point where topics are tested to see if and how they function as complex systems. There is lots of work on the network structure and dynamics of various systems; there is lots of agent-based modeling, and some of this work has gotten along enough to do both agent-based modeling and network analysis. Then there are various forays into emergence, self-organization, autopoiesis, swarm behavior, dynamics, chaos, evolution, and measurments of complexity. But, there is yet to be any sort of criteria set by which researchers can go out and determine if and how some topic of study is and acts like a complex system.

I am not setting up a straw person here. I know our field is very new; in fact, in some ways there is no complexity science; there are, instead, the complexity sciences. I know there are multiple definitions of what a complex system is; and i know we work in a broad range of fields, making any sort of singular statement both impossible and, at least from my perspective, unncessary. we can accept that complexity is an encyclopedic term and leave it at that.

So, for sake of discussion, let's just focus on the social sciences. In the social sciences, there does not seem to be much research actually applying the full force of complexity science to the study of a topic. Researchers do not seem to often take a topic, apply some criteria or empirical tests to see if it functions like a complex system, and then proceed on to examine the topic in complex systems terms.
Instead, it just seems that most topics are assumed to be complex systems, and some aspect of them is studied, say their network structure or the role agent-based interaction plays in their emergence.

My colleague, Galen Buckwalter and I are working on a paper now that does just the sort of thing we are talking about. Our work is in community health science. We are trying to take a topic and say, "okay, we think this community can be studied as a complex system; we think it acts like a complex system, and we have all these methodological tools that we can use to explore the empirical validity of our conjectures, so, let's proceed, in litmus test fashion, to determine if and how our community acts like a complex system."

Why do we think this is important? Well, I guess I will need to blog on it a bit, but for now I think the main answer is that, without some type of empirical and methodological rigor established (start with a, then move to b, etc), it becomes impossible to pull together the arsenal of tools, theories and concepts complexity scientists have created over the last three decades to get the most out of studying any given topic in the social sciences in complex systems terms. That is all for now, but i will try to say more and say it better.

Michelangelo and Complexity Part 2

2010-05-19T09:23:00.004-04:00

Okay, so a few of my personal art critics asked me to push the painting you see above a bit further. To see the older version, click here The argument was that I needed to develop the network more, to make it stand out. I think it was a very good recommendation and I like this version of the painting much better. So, here is it.

Homage to Michelangelo and Complexity

2010-05-12T09:05:00.005-04:00

Michelangelo and Da Vinci's work are a major source of inspiration for my artistic and scientific work in complexity. Their Renaissance attitude is, in many ways, what complexity science, with its multi-disciplinarity and systems perspective is all about.

In the painting I have posted here I had a very specific goal. I wanted to do a painting in the manner of Michelangelo: a painting that focused on the human body and that celebrated the mathematical and scientific dimensions of art. However, I wanted to create a painting that fit with my own 20th century attitudes.

So, the first step was to determine how I wanted to approach the body. I stayed away from the over-muscular work of Michelangelo, opting instead for a more realistic portrait. I also wanted to have the person pose in a somewhat more humble and less grandiose manner--something that honored the dignity of humans but without going overboard. In the complex, global society in which we live, humility and a recognition of one's deep interconnectedness to the world, at least for me, is an important ethical position. I wanted to reflect that in the painting.

The second step was to incorporate a Zen Buddhist perspective into the painting. For me, the symbolism I primarily focused on revolves around the sky, clouds, and the circle, which have a lot to do with systems thinking, holism, interconnectedness, meditation and bodhichitta.

The final step was to incorporate some of the latest developments in complexity science and mathematics, namely networks and fractals. Math and science were an important part of Renaissance painting, and they are likewise important in my own work. In a fractal-like manner, there are levels of scale in the painting: there are large circles, which suggest a larger network that cannot be entirely seen; then there is the specific network structure surrounding the figure.

So far, reaction to the painting has been mixed. That is understandable because I struggled with the painting myself. I would like to continue exploring this type of painting, working next with more than one person or playing off of different poses that Michelangelo used in his own work.

Center for Complexity in Health

2010-05-06T10:57:00.007-04:00

It has been a while since my last post. My research colleagues and I have been busy creating a new research center for studying health and health care via the tools of complexity science. It is called, appropriately enough, the Center for Complexity in Health. Much thanks to Michael Ball and Kenny Carvalho for their incredible viking work.

CHECK OUT THE SITE: cch.ashtabula.kent.edu

HERE IS A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE CENTER'S MISSION STATEMENT AND AREAS OF RESEARCH

The Center for Complexity in Health (CCH) promotes the application of complexity science to the study of health and health care through a cross-disciplinary program of teaching, training and research. The CCH’s application of complexity science includes complex systems thinking, computational modeling, network analysis, data mining, and qualitative and historical approaches to complexity. The CCH is specifically committed to collaborating with health care centers and practitioners in Ashtabula County, Ohio; and to students and faculty at Kent State University. The CCH is affiliated with the Robert S. Morrison Health and Science Building, Kent State University at Ashtabula. Other affiliations we are working on include Kent State University’s College of Public Health and the Kent-Summa Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

The center will have several foci:

• Becoming a leading international research center in the application of complexity science to the study of health and health care;
• Generating revenue for our campus through extramural funding;
• Fostering interdisciplinary research with faculty at the Ashtabula campus, as well as Kent State University and other universities;
• Developing our undergraduate student population’s skills in science, technology and mathematics in application to health and health care, particularly public health;
• Developing collaborative research relations with local health agencies and businesses to promote the public health of Ashtabula County.

The current topics of the CCH are:

• Studying how communities, as complex systems, impact residential health, particularly in disadvantaged communities;
• Developing new tools for measuring and teaching medical students, residents, and clinical faculty about the challenges of medical professionalism in today’s complex health care system, both nationally and globally;
• Using network analysis to research how medical learning environments shape nurses and physicians;
• Studying how public educational systems impact the health and wellbeing of children.
• Developing the SACS Toolkit, a new method for studying health and health care from a complexity science perspective.

Westside Market, Cleveland Ohio, Complexity Photo

2010-03-06T21:03:00.004-05:00

Balcony View of the Westside Market, Cleveland Ohio, 1971 & 2010

This photomontage highlights how Cleveland’s past is part of our present moment and how, in many ways, our city’s past remains alive for us, if we only take a moment to look. The focus of this montage is one of Cleveland’s most important landmarks, the Westside Market. Located at the corner of West 25th Street and Lorain Avenue, Cleveland’s Westside Market has been in business since 1840.

Description of the Photomontage
The photos in this montage were taken at two different points in time. The black and white photos were taken circa 1970, courtesy of the Cleveland Public Library. The color photographs were taken in 2010 by the artist.

Some things stay the same: Much of the Westside Market, despite the many years, remains the same: fans on walls, posters, light fixtures, etc. What is odd about these remains is that, while some are very important, others continue for no apparent reason. It is as if somebody forgot about them or nobody ever thought to take them down. In the far left side of the picture, for example, is a really old fan. Why is it there? Does it still work? It begs the question about how history comes to us; perhaps, sometimes, as remains or leftovers from the past; things people forgot about or were too busy to clean up. Funny! Then there are those things that remain because of the important value they hold: the architecture, style of the booths, etc. Perhaps the best example is the old steer’s head on the butcher’s booth in the lower left side of the picture—it is still there, some 40 years later.

And then things change: History is not just the study of the past; it is also the study of how things have changed. Much has changed at the Westside Market over the last 40 years. For example, looking at the montage, it appears that the only booth from the 1970s that is still operating today is Fernengels—see the middle right side of the photograph. Other changes can be found in the montage as well: clothing styles, eyewear, hats, the types of produce sold in the booths, etc. If one had enough time, a rather interesting anthropology of Cleveland’s culture could be constructed from this montage.

Similarities and differences aside, the people in these photographs all seem to be enjoying the same thing: the food! Food is such an important part of our lives, and places like the Westside Market struggle to keep the “open-market” approach going—not an easy task in a world full of suburban-based, giant-sized, high-convenience food stores. It is great to see the Market still thriving after all these years! Long live the traditions of Cleveland.

The Increasing Complexities of Professionalism

2010-02-07T11:21:00.002-05:00

My colleague, Fred Hafferty, and I have been working for the past five years to articulate a grounded theoretical frame for understanding medical professionalism, primarily by applying the tools of complexity science. Our work, to date, has been mixed methods--historical, qualitative, numerical, networks.

We finally published a somewhat comprehensive overview of what we mean when we say "medical professionalism is a complex system."

Click here for a summary of our article "The Increasing Complexities of Medical Professionalism"
The article is our second major statement on professionalism from a complexity science perspective.
The first, published in 2006, can be found here:
"The Complexities of Professionalism: A Preliminary Investigation?

There is still lots of work to do and, in part, many of our ideas are tentative and somewhat vague. But, we at least have a reasonably solid grasp of the point we are trying to make.

The article was published in the February 2010 Edition of Academic Medicine, which is a special edition for the Flexner Centenary. (Click here to learn more about Flexner)

Dad/Son Inside/Outside Summer/Winter

2010-01-14T13:57:00.005-05:00

Here is another assemblage photomontage. The photos are by my nephew, Kevin Rusnak, and by me.

21st Century Dinner Party—Cathy’s House

2010-01-10T11:21:00.004-05:00

The following photo is part of my new series of work.
In what follows, I provide a series of powerpoint slides that explain what is going on in this photo. Just click on the slide to enlarge and read it.

Slide 1

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Cesar Hidalgo: Complexity Art and Science

2010-01-08T19:49:00.004-05:00

If you spend any time regularly visiting Barabasi's website, you have seen the incredible work he has done with Cesar Hidalgo--as the above picture shows.

Cesar Hidalgo is a Research Fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Development. His doctoral work is in physics at Notre Dame, where Barabasi worked before moving to Northeastern University.

In terms of research, Hidalgo has done some absolutely incredible stuff, applying the new science of networks to the study of global economy and (working with colleagues, particularly, Gonzalez) mobility within networks.

In terms of global economy, you need to see the supporting website for his work with Barabasi and colleague on the product spaces of various nation-states. CLICK HERE

In terms of his work with Barabasi and Gonzalez on mobility patterns within networks, CLICK HERE.

What I also find fascinating about Hidalgo's work is that he approaches networks as objects of art--something I obviously take rather seriously, as my recent posts have shown. To see some of Hidalgo's network art, CLICK HERE.

Much is made of the C.P. Snow's two cultures--art and science. However, if you spend any time looking at the networks created by Barabasi, Hidalgo and colleagues, it is clear that the boundaries between art and science need not be so rigid. Looking at their networks is an act of both science and art. They are both intellectually incredible and artistically brilliant!

Festivus Art Show

2009-12-23T19:59:00.004-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to see our work at the Festivus Art Show, held by the most excellent Cleveland Gallery WALLEYE. What a great opportunity to buy local for the holidays and support Cleveland Artists. The WALLEYE Gallery is doing a great job!! CLICK HERE to read more about the gallery.

Also, thanks to the WALLEYE Gallery, you can buy some of our stuff for the next couple shows at their Boutique, located in the basement of the gallery.

Small Assemblage Photos

2009-11-24T09:29:00.005-05:00

Here are examples of the 3D photo cut-ups I have been working on the past couple weeks. These are photos that I have taken of family, friends or my art work, which I then use to create 3D cut-ups. Most are small--4X6 or 8X10 inches, so they work in a variety of smaller environments. They are mounted on canvas board.

Odd Mall Was a Success!

2009-11-09T22:03:00.004-05:00

Here is a picture of my wife, Maggie, and our daughter, Ruby at the OddMall Show--the art show in Hudson Ohio we set up shop at this past weekend. We had a lot of fun, got to meet some great people, and we actually sold a few things. Not bad for a day's work. Thanks to everyone who came to our booth and supported us. See you soon at the next OddMall Show.

Click here to get information about the show

Complex Network Sculpture

2009-11-04T09:40:00.004-05:00

Here is a complex network sculpture I did. I used foam-core, toothpicks, wooden sticks(all painted in acrylic) to create this sculpture. I wanted to see what a network would look like in 3-D. The networks currently used in science are usually compressed into a 2-D space. Here is what I came up with. I think it is rather nifty.

Odd Mall Show, Saturday, Nov 7th

2009-11-04T08:11:00.005-05:00

Click here to get information about the show

For local folks, the Art & Science Factory (my business) will be selling its wares at the Odd Mall Show in Hudson Ohio! This is one of the best art venues in Northeastern Ohio. Incredibly great art and lots of "out there" stuff. We went last year and spent lots of money. This year will be even better because we are in the show! Ha!

Network Musings

2009-11-03T12:15:00.004-05:00

This is a painting I recently completed that addresses several influences I have been wrestling with. On the scientific side is the new science of networks; on the artistic side is Italian art, surrealism, abstraction and pop. More specifically, my goal was to find the middle grounded between a scientific and artistic approach to social networks. The network in this painting is from my research on social networks in medical education.

The painting is mixed media: acrylic paint and cut-out, 3-D foam core and poster board. The painting is 24 X 48 inches.

MFA in Computational Art

2009-10-13T09:46:00.002-04:00

Okay, this is amazing! At Goldsmiths, University of London, you can get an MFA in computational art.

Here is a description of the program.

Here is a link to projects.

What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory

2009-10-13T09:15:00.003-04:00

Okay, this is about as "out there" as art gets. I found this fascinating article by Philip Galanter, of the Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York City, USA.

The title of the article is:
What is Generative Art? Complexity Theory as a Context for Art Theory.

Here is the abstract from the paper:

Abstract
In this paper an attempt is made to offer a definition of generative art that is inclusive and provides fertile ground for both technical and art theoretical development. First the use of systems is identified as a key element in generative art. Various ideas from
complexity theory are then introduced. It is noted that systems exist on a continuum from the highly ordered to the highly disordered. Citing examples from information
theory and complexity science, it is noted that highly ordered and highly disordered systems are typically viewed as simple, and complex systems exhibit both order and disorder. This leads to the adoption of effective complexity, order, and disorder as organizing principles in the comparison of various generative art systems. This inclusive view leads to the somewhat surprising observation that generative art is as old as art itself. A number of specific artists and studies are discussed within this systems and complexity theory influenced paradigm. Finally a number of art theoretical questions are introduced to exercise the suggested generative art definition and implicit paradigm.

As I understand this paper, generative art follows the guidelines of complexity science and, more specifically, Joshua Epstein's work on generative computational social science. Here, the idea is that art is generated from the bottom-up by some iterative artistic process, followed to its logical conclusions, forming some type of emergent system. The rules can be anything--paint right, then left, then up, each turn of the paint being a different color, to produce some painting.

These paintings can be highly ordered or fall into total chaos. One can catalogue these various systems paintings, and so forth. In my mind, Chuck Close's abstract portraits is a good example of a highly ordered complex system. Galanter may disagree. Either way, it is a very interesting and provocative paper worth reading.

Complexity and Art

2009-10-13T08:15:00.005-04:00

For the past couple weeks I have been touring the web looking for anything I can find on the relationship between complexity and art. To my surprise I've found some very amazing stuff.

One of the first things I found is a book my the well-known mathematician and complexity scientist, John Casti and a colleague of his, Anders Karlqvist, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is called Complexity and Art.

(Click here to see a preview on Google Books)

The book is the outcome of a one-week meeting of complexity scientists and artists in Sweden, during which they explored how artists conceptualize and deal with complexity. In this case, they explored complexity as both an aesthetic and empirical topic. The meeting took place in 1998 and the book was published in 2002. Albeit a bit old, the book is very fascinating and worth an explore!

The Big Duh Self-Portrait

2009-09-12T13:12:00.009-04:00

This past week I painted my first self-portrait. My brilliant nephew, Kevin Rusnak, took the photo of me at a family barbecue.

I decided to call this painting The Big Duh Self-Portrait, in homage to Chuck Close's Big Self-Portrait and to Richard Avedon--two of my favorite artists. Despite all my interest in complexity, I am ultimately drawn to the human face and portrait. Painting this picture was a lot of fun--albeit a bit weird, as I have never painted myself before. As you also can see, I very much enjoy self-deprecating humor--not something as widely celebrated in highbrow art as it should.

Here is a SLIDE SHOW of the portrait as I worked on it.

cartoon comics complexity -- or, one big mob

2009-09-08T10:33:00.014-04:00

I have always been a huge comics fan. I wasn't so much into the superhero genre, though. I was drawn more to humor, social critique and science-fiction comics. In particular, I was a huge fan of MAD Magazine. My specific heroes were Don Martin, Sergio Aragonés, and those drawing during the 1970s, early 1980s.

For some reason, I have always treated comics as something worthy of the canvas. As such, for years, I have been painting, as well as drawing, comic characters. Most of my work aims at creating complex forms. My inspiration comes from complexity science--in particular, fractals, chaos theory, and dynamical systems--and, in terms of art, the complex forms created by many Asian wood and ivory carvings, and by the various battle and group scenes sculpted, carved or painted during the Renaissance. In fact, many of my cartoons are 3-D: i start with some backdrop (canvas, wood, foamcore board) upon which i glue various 3-D figures. it is very time consuming and tedious, but the result is very satisfying.

I call my cartoon complexity OneBigMob.

For more pictures, visit my website.

If you really dig these images, see my cartoon t-shirts at my Cafe Press store.

Pockets Full of Memories -- Complexity Art

2009-09-02T08:59:00.003-04:00

On 1 Sept 2009 I posted on the "SOM for qualitative data" work done by Timo Honkela and colleagues at the Helsinki University of Technology. Exploring Timo Honkela's work further, I found out that he and his colleagues are also involved in the application of the SOM to the world of art.

They were involved (2003-2006) in an incredible interactive exhibition at the Centre Pompidou Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
Here is a brief description of the exhibition from the website--which you can visit by clicking here.

"Pockets Full of Memories" is an interactive installation that consists of a data collection station where the public takes a digital image of an object, adds descriptive keywords, and rates its properties using a touchscreen. The data accumulates through-out the length of the exhibition. The Kohonen self-organizing map algorithm is used to organize the data, moving the images of the objects into an ordered state according to similarities defined by the contributors’ semantic descriptions. The archive of objects is projected large-scale on the walls of the gallery space showing various visualizations such as the objects positioned in the 2D matrix, their movement over time, and textual descriptions. The audience can also interact with the data online to access descriptions of the objects and to contribute comments and messages to each object from anywhere in the world.

Grounded Neural Networking

2009-09-01T11:50:00.003-04:00

If you are into neural nets, you know about the Laboratory of Computer and Information Science at the Helsinki University of Technology. One of the Department's most important professors is Teuvo Kohonen, the creator of the self-organizing map algorithm (SOM). The deparment also provides one of the best shareware downloads (SOM Toolbox) for using the SOM--it runs in the MatLab environment.

As I discussed in a previous blog (4/01/09), in 2003 I published an article in Symbolic Interaction exploring how qualitative researchers can use the SOM to conduct grounded theoretical investigations of large, complex, numerical databases. For the next six years, I sat around hoping someone other than myself would find the idea interesting and useful. Nothing happened! I know that publishing on mixed methods seldom goes anywhere, but I thought that, with the incredible advances taking place in complexity science and informatics and the internet, qualitative researchers would eventually consider the idea.

They have yet to do so. But, perhaps the latest article by Nina Janasik, Timo Honkela, and Henrik Bruun of the Helsinki University of Technology can change people's minds.

The title of their article is TEXT MINING IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH. The purpose of the article is to show qualitative researchers how to apply the SOM to qualitative data.

Here is the abstract:

---------------------------------------------
ABSTRACT
The article provides an introduction to and a demonstration of the self-organizing map (SOM) method for organizational researchers interested in the use of qualitative data. The SOM is a versatile quantitative method very commonly used across many disciplines to analyze large data sets. The outcome of the SOM analysis is a map in which entities are positioned according to similarity. The authors' argument is that text mining using the SOM is particularly effective in improving inference quality within qualitative research. SOM creates multiple well-grounded perspectives on the data and thus improves the quality of the concepts and categories used in the analysis.
---------------------------------------------

When I read this article I was more than a little excited! I cannot tell you how much time I spent between 2001 and 2003 at the Helsinki website trying to learn about the SOM and figuring out how to use the SOM Toolbox. Let's just say it was a lot and leave it at that. I also cannot tell you how much respect I have for the researchers there. Incredible research; they make their work and software freely available to others. It is just fantastic.

I also have to say that Janasik, Honkela, and Bruun do an excellent job addressing the limitations of my 2003 article--in particular, how I did not go far enough in demonstrating just how useful the SOM is for qualitative work. As such, I agree completely with their critique. And, I agree that any qualitative researcher trying to figure out how to do their work in the digital age should read this article.

Enough said...

Key Words: grounded theory • constructivism • self-organizing map • text mining • document interpretation

Mother & Daughter Assemblage

2009-08-28T08:47:00.005-04:00

Here is a photographic example of the assemblage process. In this photo a mom and her daughter are integrated to form a system and yet their differences remain. Note the similarities in eyes, chin, nose, etc as these part are assembled into one another to form the picture.

Reuben Margolin -- think Leonardo Da Vinci meets Complexity Science

2009-08-16T22:27:00.005-04:00

Okay, just in case you do not agree with my art postings about the connection between art and complexity science, you need to look at the work of Reuben Margolin. He is a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci! If you did not think art and math and dynamical systems had anything to do with one another, then it is time for you to change your mind.

Reuben Margolin does kinetic sculptures--sculptures of geometry, dynamical systems, waves, etc. it is art meets math.

Click here to watch a great video of his work.

Or, you can visit his website, which has lots of video links on YouTube.

I am just in awe of this guy's work!

Complexity Artist, Damon Soule

2009-08-13T08:01:00.002-04:00

Damon Soule is another artist that, to me, represents a new development within the art world--artists trying to achieve synthesis (synthetic wholes) out of the evolving merger of various, and often times, disparate parts, times, perspectives, places, etc. I consider these works of art to be what I call complexity paintings.

Like Oliver Vernon (who I blogged about recently), Damon Soule applies his incredible talent to the creation of n-dimensional topographies, resulting in some amazing systems paintings. Check out Soule's work at his website.

Space Madonna 2 -- a complexity theory painting

2009-08-07T09:21:00.005-04:00

Here is a second version of my Space Madonna. The focus in this painting, as in most of my work, is the creation of a multi-singularity; that is, an assemblage of disparate elements (multiplicity) that form a whole (singularity).

Space Madonna -- a complexity theory painting

2009-08-07T09:13:00.004-04:00

Here is a painting I recently completed, or one version of it. It combines cubism, abstract expressionism, pop, illustration, icons, and surrealism into one painting, with the focus on my approach to art--see previous post.

Complexity Artist, Oliver Vernon

2009-08-07T08:28:00.002-04:00

If you follow this blog at all, you know that I apply complexity science to both my work in medical sociology and art.

I want to highlight an incredible artist I have been following. His name is Oliver Vernon.

What is fascinating about his work is its assembled quality. It draws upon and integrates so much from the past hundred years of art, from abstract expressionism to surrealism to pop. It also is a combination of organic and machine-like forms. Most important--and I saw this mentioned in several reviews of his work--it is a combination of chaos and order, like some type of chaotic self-organized order. I have included several links here to his work.

I do not know if Vernon intends his work to address complexity. But, I definitely think his work appeals to and has a lot to say about complexity through the tools of visual art.

Out of respect for copyright, I have not posted a picture of his work in this blog--but just click on any link below to see his incredible work

1. Oliver Vernon's website

2. A Youtube video of one of his shows

3. A list of Google Images of his work

4. Here is a blog showing some pictures

Urbino Sociocybernetics Conference Papers

2009-07-19T10:15:00.004-04:00

Well, I am back from a couple weeks in Europe where I attended the sociocybernetics conference in Urbino. The conference focus was life on the web, and related to this topic, e-science and web science.

Here is a link to the conference website.

Here is a link to the papers presented at the conference.

Here is a link to the paper I presented, including my powerpoint. NOTE: click on Paper #6.

My paper and presentation explore how the SACS Toolkit is useful for modeling complex systems using web-based (digital) data.

It was a fantastic conference and I met a bunch of really great people! Thanks to Fabio Giglietto and his graduate students for hosting a great conference!

Foucault & Complexity

2009-06-23T18:31:00.004-04:00

The past several days I have been searching the web for articles or books that explore the connections between Foucault's work and complexity science. I am happy to report that I have found a few very interesting things.

First, Kurt Richardson and Paul Cilliers (who have written some incredible stuff on complexity and management and complexity and philosophy) have a book Explorations in Complexity Thinking. It is an edited book comprised of the pre-proceedings submitted for the two-day Complexity and Philosophy workshop held 22nd-23rd February 2007, in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

One of the pre-postings is by Ken Baskin, who is affliated with The Instititute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence (ISCE), which originally grew out of the New England Complex Systems Institute's Organizational-Related Programmes department in mid-1999.

Baskin's paper is Foucault, Complexity, and Myth: Toward a Complexity-based Approach to Social Evolution (a.k.a. History). (You can preview the paper by opening the cover in Amazon and going to it--it is the first chapter in the book)

Second is Mark Olssen's Foucault as Complexity Theorist: Overcoming the problems of classical philosophical analysis. Published in Educational Philosophy and Theory. Olssen is at the University of Surrey.

As I come across more articles and books I will post them.

The Built Environment: Communities as Complex Systems

2009-06-17T13:44:00.003-04:00

One of the fastest growing areas in the study of community health in complex systems terms is the built environment literature.

The built environment refers to the human-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging from large-scale civic surroundings to smaller settings such as work and home.

The term is also now widely used to describe the interdisciplinary field of study which addresses the design, management and use of these human-made surroundings and their relationship to the human activities which take place within them. The field draws upon a wealth of disciplines and areas of study including geography, urban planning, epidemiology, computational and spatial economics, law, medicine, health care, medical sociology, management, architecture, and design and technology.

An excellent website that has devoted considerable attention to this topic is The Prevention Institute. Check it out for more information, in particular their PDF on eleven communities that have implemented programs to improve the built environment.

Other places to explore include:

1. The Center for the Built Environment at Berkeley.

2. The Built Environment Blog.

3. The Built Environment and Health at Columbia University.

Social Science & Medicine: Special Edition on Health & Complexity

2009-05-30T09:12:00.004-04:00

In 2007, the periodical, Social Science & Medicine (one of the leading journals in community health science) published a special edition on the complexities of studying community health--65, Nov 2007, starting page 1281.

The theme of the special edition was PLACING HEALTH IN CONTEXT. As the editors of this edition, James Dunn and Steve Cummins state, "While there is a long history of interest in place and health in the geography of health, in the past decade or more a number of disciplines have witnessed an increasing interest in the ‘effect’ that attributes of collective social organization and the local built environment at neighbourhood scale have on a variety of social outcomes, including health, health behaviours, early child development, youth delinquency, crime and deviance, political behaviour, employment outcomes and other economic opportunities" (p. 1821).

While Dunn and Cummins agree that significant advances resulted from the research surrounding the community-as-context model (see earlier post), there is much still to be done. Put simply by me (and I do mean simply), the community-as-context model needs to be replaced by the community-as-complex-system model. That is not quite what they say, but it works for a general sense of the articles. The community-as-context needs to get sophisticated; as it stands currently, it lacks the theoretical and methodological rigor to get the job done.

As data for my statement, here, for example, is a quote from Dunn and Cummins toward the end of their editorial overview: "The collection of papers presented here that sow the seeds of debate, for example, on the role of neighbourhood preference in understanding associations between context and health, is a potential lightning rod. Similarly, the use of complexity theory, given its novelty and its dissimilarity to the conventional ‘black box’ approach of investigating the effects of interventions should also spark responses in the literature. All of the papers in this Special Issue point us in compelling new directions for research that places health in context. We hope that this special issue sparks debate and new lines of inquiry and look forward to its future repercussions" (p. 1821).

The list of authors that Dunn and Cummins draw upon is impressive. The arguements made by these authors is even more incredible. Agree with them or not, you need to read this special edition and consider the arguments its authors make!

Interview with David Byrne

2009-05-22T13:33:00.006-04:00

The following is a brief interview I conducted with British Sociologist and Complexity Scientist, David Byrne.

Dr. Byrne is Professor in the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University, England, where he is also Director of Postgraduate Studies. Dr. Byrne is the author of several books and a long list of articles, including his 1998 book, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences--the first book to critically review and explore the application of complexity science to sociological inquiry. His most recent book, edited with noted sociologist and methodologist, Charles Ragin is The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods

Dr. Byrne is an expert in methods, urban planning, community health, social policy, social exclusion and complexity science.

-----------------------------------------------
INTERVIEW WITH DR. BYRNE

CASTELLANI: Dr. Byrne, thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview. Your research agenda is rather vast in its scope—ranging from the philosophy of complexity science to method to urban planning to health care inequality. If you do not mind, I am going to narrow in on method first, given its wider implications for those reading this blog—most of whom are students and researchers new to the field of complexity science and its practice within sociology.

A. Case-Based Research
CASTELLANI: For the last several years, you have been a major advocate of a case-based approach to research. You specifically endorse what you and Charles Ragin refer to as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). First, how do you define QCA?

BYRNE: It is a method which is ‘set theoretic’ i.e. it understands causal relations in the social world in terms of relationships in combination – sets, rather than the unique contribution of single variables. It is based on systematic comparison – essentially an extension of John Stuart Mills’ method of differences. It requires careful qualitative engagement with specific cases as the foundation of that comparison.

CASTELLANI: Of the three major types of QCA (crisp-set, multi-value and fuzzy set), which do you find most useful and why? Or, do you approach the distinctions within QCA a different way?

BYRNE: I generally work with crisp set techniques and actually almost never go beyond the truth table. So I use QCA as a kind of mix of exploratory / explanatory – often focusing on ‘contradictory configurations’ in which the assemblage of elements in the line of the truth table – the configuration – generates different outcomes. That makes me look at those cases for what else is different about them. I see multi-value QCA as an extension of crisp set but it is much more complex to use. I frequently use Cluster Analysis as a data reduction technique and binarize membership of a cluster. Fuzzy set is very interesting and I have thought about how we might use distance from a cluster centre as a fuzzying principle but I have never managed to bring it off.

CASTELLANI: For researchers and graduate students new to case-based research, what is your best argument (apologetic) for including QCA in their toolbox of techniques?

BYRNE: For me the crucial things about QCA are the following:

•It allows for complex causation – lots of things acting together to generate an outcome. Conventional statistical modelling can do this in a limited sort of way through interaction.

•It allows for multiple causation – different combinations – in QCA terms configurations – can generate the same outcome. More than one way to skin a cat.

•It really makes us think about ‘what is a case’ – what Charles Ragin calls the processes of casing – just as important to specify the character and boundaries of cases as to be careful about operationalizing in measurement of what I prefer to call attributes or variate traces rather than variables.

•It really does have qualitative phases – conventionally at the beginning because the researcher really does have to engage closely with cases using qualitative techniques in order to establish attribute values. If you start, as I have often, with a data set of pre-given measures, you often have to move on to qualitative investigation to explore further differences.

•That word – differences – QCA is founded on distinctions.

B. Epistemology

CASTELLANI: Your research agenda is grounded in what you refer to as a complex/critical realist approach. What is complex/critical realism?

BYRNE: The term comes from David L. Harvey and his collaborator Reed. It involves a synthesis of the critical realist perspective of Roy Bhaskar (but the early Bhaskar) and complexity theory. So it says most of the world is made up of complex systems – although see Paul Cilliers’ important work on how such systems are both real and the products of scientific construction – the complexity part. Then it endorses critical realism’s deep ontology of the real as generative mechanisms, the actual as the contingently and contextually expressed outcome of those mechanisms (I wish we had another word than mechanisms), and the empirical as what we as scientists make from those mechanisms in action in the actual. Note ‘make’. This is a constructionist position but one which says that the real also has a say.

CASTELLANI: Why should researchers consider your epistemological approach important enough to adopt?

BYRNE: I would say it is David L. Harvey’s and I adopted his approach because it enabled me to make sense of social causality and allows agency, including conscious and informed agency, into play with the potential for knowledge to actually be applied in a meaningful and useful fashion. Does that for me and I recommend the treatment to others for the same reason.

C. The Complexity of Place, Space and Health.

CASTELLANI: Our Q&A is situated within the larger theme that I have been blogging on for the past couple weeks: how to improve the community health science literature by adopting a complexity science perspective.

You may disagree, but a major theme that I see in your work over the last decade is your rigorous and nuanced attempt to develop a methodological-epistemological framework researchers can use to develop better models of the complexities surrounding place, space and health. This includes the complexities of social exclusion, urban planning, spatial inequality, and the challenges surrounding the relationship between individuals and the communities in which they live. For example in your chapter, Complex and Contingent Causation—the Implications of Complex Realism for Quantitative Modeling (found in Carter and New’s Making Realism Work, 2004) you address one of the biggest challenges facing the community health science literature today: the inability of researchers to create a satisfactory way to address the relationship between micro-level health outcomes and aggregate level phenomena such as the neighborhood effect.

You state: “Multi-level modeling has been proposed as a way of resolving the difficulties of cross-level relationships among individually expressed health and social conditions. This interesting approach does represent a genuine effort to confront problems which are central to the relationship between the collective and the individual. However, this chapter will argue that the approach remains unsatisfactory, precisely because it ‘disembodies’ both aspects of the complex individual and aspects of the complex social systems through which individuals lead their lives” (p. 51).

CASTELLANI: What do you mean that researchers tend to “disembody” complexity?

BYRNE: Disembody is a specific kind of abstraction. Abstraction is necessary – I think Katherine Hayles is great on this in her How we became post-human but we also have to be very careful. I was using Chris Allen’s arguments – which I found interesting, well put and provocative – to frame my own argument. Chris was saying: don’t lets regard agentic human beings as physiological dopes ‘determined’ by the external and their own attributes in interaction. He pointed out that there is real variation in outcome – the reality of any probabilistic form of explanation of cause e.g. in a randomized controlled trial (RCT). I agree up to a point but think that we can move towards a better account if we think really hard about complex and contingent causation. I have written elsewhere about how I don’t have TB despite being exposed to cases in adolescence and having a very strong Heaf test reaction at that point. Too well fed, too well housed, and with parents who didn’t get the disease or die of it whilst they both had siblings who did and did so bred for resistance. But if I get AIDS or am starved in conditions like a WWII Japanese prisoner of war camp, then I will get TB. That is complexity expressed in my individual body and I want a modelling process which moves towards allowing for that.

CASTELLANI: As a solution, how do you think the methodological-epistemological framework you have developed helps researchers to preserve the complexity of their models?

BYRNE: First by making us think about it. Second, by looking for and using methods, quantitative and qualitative, which respect the complexity of the real as opposed to artificial (I owe this distinction to Elias Khalil) world. So always be skeptical about simplicity. It might be there but mostly it isn’t.

CASTELLANI: Related, you and others (such as Paul Cilliers and Charles Ragin) have criticized complexity scientists for making the same reductionistic mistake as multi-level researchers: complexity scientists still seem to reduce to an unnecessary level the complexity of systems. Why do you think complexity scientists fall prey to this reductionistic tendency? How do they get out of this trap?

BYRNE: See Morin’s excellent essay on this very point at: http://cogprints.org/5217/1/Morin.pdf

My take is that the kind of complexity which says we can always generate complexity from simple interactions following for example rules – note always, I have no quarrel with sometimes here – ends up with specifications which ‘look like’ the laws of Newtonian science although of course they are nothing of the kind. However, they are reductionist – you can do this if not in a white coat then in a techy sort of way which makes you look like a proper scientistic scientist. There is a real battle to be fought here although interestingly there are physicists – Peter Allen’s excellent work for example – and lots of eco centred biologists – as well as medics – who are beginning to recognize that they cannot deal with problems of explanation and action without dealing in what Morin calls general complexity.

D. The Future of Sociology

CASTELLANI: Without creating a straw-person, I think it is fair to say that sociologists, particularly those in the main-street of the profession have been slow to embrace or involve themselves in a critical dialogue with complexity science. What is your best argument for why sociologists should involve themselves in the new science(s) of complexity?

BYRNE: Because it allows us to deal with systems without falling into the Parsonian trap (although note that Parsons did have a sense of the complex from time to time). It also is a way towards agentic intervention. My first degree was in Sociology and Social Administration – we would usually but not necessarily correctly talk about Social Policy instead of administration today – and my Master’s was in that field rather than mainstream Sociology. I am an applied social scientist and complexity pushes towards action. It also is a way of getting past what frankly I see as the dead hand of much of contemporary sociological theory. Post modernism is a dead end but I am thinking here as much of Giddens and even of Bourdieu (and I have a deal of respect for Bourdieu). We need to engage empirically and get beyond the absolutely necessary preliminary task of empirical description into a serious and non-positivist engagement with social causality. That is what complexity lets me do.

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CASTELLANI: Dr. Byrne, thank you so much for your time. For more information on Dr. Byrne's work, visit his website by clicking here.

Health & Place: An International Journal

2009-05-20T11:45:00.004-04:00

While the community-as-complex-system model is relatively new, it already has a major journal outlet, called Health & Place: An International Journal.

Edited by Graham Moon, University of Southampton, School of Geography, Highfield, Southampton, the journal is dedicated to the study of all aspects of health and health care in which place or location matters.

As stated on its website, "Recent years have seen closer links evolving between medical geography, medical sociology, health policy, public health and epidemiology. The journal reflects these convergences, which emphasise differences in health and health care between places, the experience of health and care in specific places, the development of health care for places, and the methodologies and theories underpinning the study of these issues.

The journal brings together international contributors from geography, sociology, social policy and public health. It offers readers comparative perspectives on the difference that place makes to the incidence of ill-health, the structuring of health-related behaviour, the provision and use of health services, and the development of health policy.

At a time when health matters are the subject of ever-increasing attention, Health & Place provides accessible and readable papers summarizing developments and reporting the latest research findings."

It is important to note that the journal is a combination of both the community-as-context model and the community-as-complex-system model. So, it is important to identify the model being used in a particular paper. Overall, it is an excellent resource for the lastest developments in the field.

Placing Health by Tim Blackman

2009-05-19T08:50:00.004-04:00

In yesterday's post, I discussed the three models currently used to do community health science. Of the three models, I am obviously a champion of the third--the community-as-complex-system model.

While I provided a basic overview of this model, I did not provide much in the way of references. I did, however, mention a book at the end.

The book is Placing Health by Tim Blackman. A link to the Google Books peek into the book is here.

Blackman's basic goal is to explain and demonstrate (through empirical inquiry) how complexity science improves our understanding of the role communities play in the health of people. Specifically, it explores how communities function as complex systems and the role these complex systems play in the lives of people, particularly in terms of spatial inequality.

Rather than review the book here, I will list several reviews for you to read. I will, however, make one point. Toward the end of the book, Blackman points to one of the explicit ways that a complex systems viewpoint changes how one approaches improving community health. While the community-as-context model is a major step forward, it is, nonetheless, a top-down model. This means that is treats the citizens of a community as objects of treatment. This leads to top-heavy, public health--the kind that does NOT involve people in their own health improvement. The community-as-complex-system model, however, is entirely different. Because it takes a bottom-up approach, it begins, by definition, with an interactive (relational) view of people and their communities, looking at how both effect the other. As such, it follows an action research protocol--people need to be involved in the improvement of their health care and their communities, which in turn, impacts of health of these people.

Okay, I will stop there. I think the book is fantastic and needs to be read by anyone serious about community or public health.

Here are some reviews to read

Review 1. International Journal of Integrated Care

2. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

Three Different Approaches to Community Health

2009-05-18T14:57:00.003-04:00

At present, one can organize the community health science literature into three dominant approaches.

1. Social Pathways Model: The oldest and most widely practiced approach is the social pathways model. This model takes a nomothetic position, seeking to determine how a small set of social factors impacts the health of a community. In this model, community is also treated as a dependent (or grouping) variable.

2. Community as Context Model: This more recent approach emerged during the 1990s and has remained very hot! In this model, community context is treated as an independent variable, separate from the contribution of various other social factors--income, educational level, family health behaviors, etc. This approach to studying communities is a top-down model.

3. Community as a Complex System: The last model is the newest and least practiced. It views communities as complex systems; and takes a bottom-up approach to modeling.

The strength of the third approach is its ability to overcome the limitations of the other two models.

The other two models suffer from a reductionistic approach to community health--community is either an independent or dependent variable, with little research done to explore the "system-level" effects of a community; or, for that matter, the link within a community between micro-level (agent-based) and macro-level (emergent) behaviors. There is also no sense of environmental forces or the dynamics of a community over time--as a system--in the other two models.

Obviously, the limitations of the first two models are challenges that a complexity science approach to communities can handle. It can handle these challenges because this third approach has a complex view of communities as systems--that is, it sees the link between the micro and macro; has the tools to study system-level, emergent behavior; and has the ability to frame how environmental forces and the larger systems within which communities are situated impacts their respective health. Its bottom-up approach also allows it to see communities as both independent and dependent variables (via the concept of feedback loop). And, its bottom-up approach allows it to see communities as both context and composite--in other words, it does not construct a false dichotomy between community and other social (individual-level) factors such as income, education, etc.

For a basic introduction to the community-as-complex-system model, see Tim Blackman's new book, Placing Health.

Complexity Science & Community Health--Univ of Michigan Style

2009-05-14T11:23:00.004-04:00

As I have discussed in previous posts, my two main substative foci are medical professionalism and community health--both from a complexity science perspective.

Over the next week I will be posting on the topic of community health, from a complexity science perspective, highlighting key ideas, scholars, periodicals, books, videos, and institutes.

I will begin with one of the leading institutes involved in the study of community health from a complexity science perspective, the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health (CSEPH), at the University of Michigan.

Working in conjunction with the world-renowned Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the Univ of Michigan, the CSEPH sits at the forefront of a complexity science approach to community health.

In 2007, the CSEPH held a symposium on complexity and community health. Here is an excellent video introducing the CSEPH symposium, housed at the National Institutes of Health, titled Symposium on a Complex Systems Approach to Population Health.

SACS Toolkit: E-Social Science from a Systems Perspective

2009-05-08T12:37:00.002-04:00

I am presenting the following paper at the upcoming sociocybernetics conference this June in Urbino Italy.

This year's conference is all about e-science and web science. The title is 'MODERNITY 2.0': EMERGING SOCIAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR IMPACTS.

For those following this blog, you know that I include e-science and web science on my map of complexity, situating them as the two newest areas of complexity science research.

My paper explores how the new toolkit my colleague, Fred Hafferty, and I have developed for modeling complex social systems (called the SACS Toolkit) can be used to manage and analyze web-based data. In fact, one of the reasons we created our toolkit was to find ways to address the growing complexity of digital data.

Here is the abstract of our paper. I will post the paper later in June, 2009.

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The SACS Toolkit provides researchers a new informatics-based ontology and methodology for managing and analyzing the massive, multi-dimensional databases regularly encountered on the web today. The SACS Toolkit does this by functioning as an intermediary between the web and researcher. Its intermediary function provides researchers several advantages. In terms of ontology, the SACS Toolkit: 1) provides a user-based filing system (social complexity theory) that help researchers organize and link multidimensional databases in a theoretically meaningful manner; 2) the filing system is also designed to form a complex system—to match the complexity of most web-based data. In terms of method, the SACS Toolkit: 1) provides a novel algorithm (assemblage) researchers can use to model complex systems with web data; 2) this algorithm works with any type of data; and 3) can be used with most methodological techniques (e.g., field research, statistics, etc), including the latest advances in agent-based modeling, network analysis, e-science and web science. In the current paper, we demonstrate the utility of the SACS Toolkit by applying it to a web-based community health science database we are currently studying. We begin with a review of the SACS Toolkit. Next, we explore the ontological and methodological challenges our database presented us—focusing on how the SACS Toolkit solved them. Fourth, we examine the model of community health we built, showing how the SACS Toolkit allowed us to make important advances in the current health sciences literature. We end inductively, suggesting how others may likewise use the SACS Toolkit.

Complexity Art

2009-04-26T09:37:00.006-04:00

The above picture is another example of what I call complexity art. The technique is called assemblage (or, alternatively, assembled cubism). For more info, see my post from 25 April 2009.

The goal of assemblage is not to redefine the role of space or time in a picture. Instead, the goal is to pictorally represent complex systems--be these systems a single individual, two people in relationship, groups, humans and nature, humans and machines, etc.

Given this goal, the completed picture, while highly representational, is primarily symbolic. It is an iconic representations of a complex system--by icon I mean here a visual (semiotic) sign that stands in place of or acts as a simulacra of something else.

The above picture is an inconic representation of a mother and daughter. One can see the structural similarities between mother and daughter in terms of their eyes, neck muscles, etc. And yet, one loses a clear sense of who's part is which. Instead, the parts blend together to create a face that is neither the mother's or daughter's. This face is an emergent system entirely dependent upon the nuanced parts of which it is made. The result is a multi-singularity: multiplicity and difference within union and integration.

ASSEMBLAGE: Complexity Science Art

2009-04-25T09:36:00.003-04:00

Sociology is not the only trajectory along which I have pursued the study of complexity. In fact, long before I figured out how to apply complexity science to sociology I was working on it in my art. As my geek t-shirt stuff suggests, art is part of my complexity agenda.

The above picture is an example of the type of complexity art I have been doing, which I call assemblage--partially in homage to the cubists and, more specifically, Robert Rauschenberg, the famous American painter.

In terms of technique, assemblage extends the work of Picasso and Braque by going beyond analytic and synthetic cubism into a new area, assembled cubism. Following Raushenberg, assembled cubism takes a complex systems approach to paintings, attempting to examine the inter-dependence and inter-connectedness of humans and the world in which they live. It also treats this inter-dependence and inter-connectedness as a system, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. How, for example, can one paint two people, showing the entanglement of their relationship, to arrive at a whole; and yet, at the same time, allow the individuals to shine through?

The spirit of assembled cubism is found in the following quote from William Johnston: "When people meet at the level of personal love achieved through radical non-attachment, they do not merge, nor are they absorbed in one another.... There is at once a total unity and a total alterity" (Silent Music, 1976, p. 147, Perennial Library).

Complexity Art--Geek T-shirts

2009-04-25T09:02:00.007-04:00

I have been working on a few new geek t-shirts shirts, which people have seemed to like. The whole idea behind these shirts is to promote complexity science specifically and science and math more generally, particularly amongst young people and kids.

CHECK EM OUT.

SHIRTS RANGE FROM 11.99 AND UP. THERE ARE ORGANIC SHIRTS AS WELL, AMERICAN APPAREL, ETC.

TO BUT THESE SHIRTS AND OTHERS CLICK HERE

Qualitative Comparative Analysis

2009-04-09T13:47:00.003-04:00

For those interested in learning more about qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), here is the link to Ragin's overview, which provides lots of information.

CLICK HERE

As I stated in my post 7 April 2009 post, QCA provides the best option for integrating qualitative and quantitative method into a new toolkit for the study of complex social systems. Check it out.

The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods

2009-04-07T21:40:00.018-04:00

For the last several posts, I have been discussing the need for complexity science to truly overcome the qualitative/quantitative divide by doing more work to develop qualitative method. The next question, then, is how?

Of the various options available to complexity scientists, I think the best is case-based method. Actually, the better term is cross-case analysis. Cross-case analysis is an inductive approach to scientific inquiry that begins with a set of cases in order to explore what makes them similar to and yet different from one another. Cross-case analysis is very iterative and data-driven: the researcher develops ideas about the non-obvious patterns of relationship amongst a database by exploring its cases.

Perhaps the most well-known cross-case method is grounded theory, which was developed by Glaser and Strauss in the middle 1960s. While their method is referred to in the popular literature as grounded theory, they actually called it (at least initially) the constant comparative method, which they argued could be used to generate grounded theory. In other words, their famous book title, The Discovery of Grounded Theory was meant to imply that, through the constant comparative method one could generate grounded theory. Instead, the name Grounded Theory stuck.

In the sticking of this name, however, a major feat in the history of social science method was lost. In a paper I published in 2003, my colleagues and I made it clear that Glaser and Strauss never meant their method to be limited to narrative data. The constant comparative method could be equally applied to numerical or narrativel data. Grounded theory was not only a breakthrough in the popularization of cross-case analysis, it was a major breakthrough in the blurring of qualitative and quantitative method.

Here is a blurb from their book:

"Our position in this book is as follows: there is no fundamental clash between the purposes and capacities of qualitative and quantitative methods or data. What clash there is concerns the primacy of emphasis on verification or generation of theory—to which heated discussions on qualitative versus quantitative data have been linked historically. We believe that each form of data is useful for both verification and generation of theory, whatever the primacy of emphasis. Primacy depends only on the circumstances of research, on the interests and training of the researcher, and on the kinds of material he needs for his theory (1967:17–18)."

Grounded theory is not the only cross-case method. Others do exist. The problem, however, is these methods have not made it into the mainstream of sociological or social scientific inquiry.

What is fascinating to me is that, while case-based method remained on the margins of sociological inquiry throughout the 1980s and 1990s, over on the other side of the scientific fence, in the natural and computational sciences, cross-case method was being rediscovered. This time, however, it emerged in the form of distributed artificial intelligence, cluster analysis, data mining, decision-tree analysis, artificial neural networking, the self-organizing map algorithm, machine intelligence, genetic algorithms, fuzzy-set theory, fuzzy-set logic, and the host of robots and algorithms running our washing machines, cars, industrial machinery, traffic lights, the internet and, the soon to come, Web 2.0.

And still sociologists sit idle, believing case-based method is something wishy washy that qualitative type people do. Just like sociologists and many social scientists have sat idle and watched complexity science emerge.

We are out of the loop--big time! Trust me, I am not being dramatic. If you approached the average sociology professor or graduate student and asked them if they could implement any of the above methods I just listed from the natural and computational sciences, and could they do so while integrating these methods with qualitative methods to conduct qualitative, cross-case analysis of large, complex databases, they would probably say no.

Hence the need for David Byrne and Charles Ragin's forthcoming book, The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods. Actually, the sub-title of the book should be qualitative, comparative analysis (QCA), because that is the method they have been advocating for several years.

It is great to see this book published. It is also great that it is a handbook, because that means other scholars are working with these ideas; and the fact that SAGE has published it means that QCA has, in some small way, gained the authority it deserves.

A quick review of the chapters in the book demonstrates the broad utility of cross-case analysis and, more specifically, QCA (click here to see the complete index). There are chapters integrating cluster analysis with case-based method, as well as chapters applying QCA to the analysis of large, complex, digital databases.

The book also goes a long way to integrating cross-case analysis with complexity science. Byrne and Ragin are major social science scholars in complexity science. In my book on Sociology and Complexity Science (SACS), for example, I identify them as two of the leading scholars in SACS--see my map of SACS. For example, Byrne wrote a very important book in 1998 titled, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences. Ragin's related book is Fuzz-Set Social Science (2000).

For those interested in developing a method for studying complex social systems, Byrne and Ragin's book provides the necessary foundation. In the name of QCA, they bring together the best of qualitative and quantitative method in order to overcome both.

Grounded Neural Networking

2009-04-01T12:47:00.005-04:00

(click here for article) GROUNDED NEURAL NETWORKING: MODELING COMPLEX QUANTITATIVE DATA.

The above publication is the type of work I am referring to as an example of developing qualitative method for studying complex systems. It is an article I wrote in 2003 integrating grounded theory method (a hallmark in qualitative methodology) with the artificial intelligence technique known as the Kohonen Self-Organizing Map. The result is a qualitative method for analyzing large, complex databases that draws upon the strength of traditional qualitative method and the latest advances in numerical analysis and, more specifically, data mining.

Santa Fe and qualitative numerical analysis

2009-04-01T09:01:00.004-04:00

This post builds on yesterday's Qualitative/Narrative Complexity Science.

Part of my argument in the above post was that, in terms of qualitative method, the major advance complexity science makes is the qualitative study of numerical data. To demonstrate this point, click on the following link to the Santa Fe Institute (the leading world institute for the study of complexity) and, in the search box, type in "qualitative method." You will get roughly 700 hits. Almost all of them contain the terms qualitative and numerical.

You will find, however, almost no mention of qualitative method, as it is understood in the social science sense of the term. This is not to say there is no such work being done. But, it by no means has a dominant voice.

Qualitative/Narrative Complexity Science

2009-03-31T21:45:00.010-04:00

For all of its advances (and they are many) complexity science has yet to bridge fully the rift between qualitative and quantitative method.

Before I explain myself, however, some quick definitions are in order. First, by qualitative method, I mean the non-numerical analysis of narrative and verbal data, as typically studied in historical inquiry, ethnography, qualitative interviews, and grounded theory. By quantitative method, I mean the study of numerical data, primarily through the application of statistics and top-down equation-based modeling.)

To its credit, complexity science has significantly progressed the qualitative analysis of numerical data. By "qualitative analysis" I mean the study of the complex, emergent, relational, dynamic, evolving, idiographic dimensions of numerical data. In fact, one could claim that complexity science method is really a major advance in the qualitative study of complex numerical data.

What complexity science has not advanced, however, is the non-numerical study complexity. To date, only a handful of articles have applied qualitative method to the study of complexity. And even fewer articles have examined how to advance the usage of qualitative method for studying complex systems.

The earliest examples I know of that apply qualitative method to the study of complexity were written by Crabtree and colleagues (most of whom are in medicine, nursing or health finance) and their study of medical practices:

1. Crabtree, B. F. (1997). Individual attitudes are no match for complex systems. Journal of Family Practice, 44(5), 447-448.

2. Crabtree, B. F. (2003). Primary care practices are full of surprises! Health Care Management Review, 28(3), 279-283.

3. Crabtree, B. F., Miller,W. L., Aita,V. A., Flocke, S. A.,&Stange, K. C. (1998). Primary care practice organization and preventive services delivery: Aqualitative analysis. Journal of Family Medicine, 46(5), 403-409.

4. Crabtree, B. F., Miller,W. L.,&Stange, K. C. (2001). Understanding practice from the ground up. Journal of Family Practice, 50(10), 881-887.

The earliest (and most widely popular) example of the development of qualitative method for the study of complex systems is Charles Ragin's Fuzzy Set Social Science (2000). Ragin also has a new book with David Byrne (a prominent British sociologist and leading scholar in the social science application of complexity science--I will blog more about this book later). The title of the book is The SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods (2009).

Despite being a small literature within complexity science, these scholars make some very compelling arguments for developing the qualitative (non-numerical) study of complexity. Perhaps the best argument is that a significant amount of data goes unexplored when qualitative method is not used.

What, for example, are the phenomenological dimensions of complex networks? What does it mean for people to be connected to one another by six or fewer links? What are the emotional dimensions of being part of a massive online social network? What role do power, conflict, hate, greed, anger, and love play in the complex global system? How does one study "confidence" in a system? What does a state of domination within a complex social system look like? Is altruism within a system more than a prisoner dilemna? I could go on and on and on.

Okay, just one more example: Think about the current global financial collapse in which most (if not all) the world is struggling? How do people make meaning of this experience? And, to consider second-order cybernetics and sociocybernetics, what consquence does the meaning people make have for the way in which our global economic system will evolve? And so on and so forth.

There is a lot qualitative method can offer complexity science. And, there is a lot complexity science can offer qualitative method. If complexity scientists turned their attention to this dimension of method, they could create some very incredible tools.

Rockin' Mandelbrot Song

2009-03-28T13:38:00.006-04:00

CLICK HERE TO SEE THIS ABSOLUTELY ROCKIN' MANDELBROT SONG

This is absolutely the coolest math song ever written. I gave a MATH DAY presentation about two weeks ago for 300 math geeks and they went crazy! It is fanstastic. Play it for yourself, friends, profs, and students--especially students in the social sciences and humanities.

The song is by Jonathan Coulton. The video was made by Pisut Wisessing in Film 324: Cornell Summer Animation Workshop, taught by animator Lynn Tomlinson.

2009-03-28T13:36:00.001-04:00

Dungeons & Dragons--the Geek Stereotype

2009-03-24T08:51:00.008-04:00

Okay, so most of us geeks fit the stereotype--instead of going on dates in highschool with humans, we were dating elves (male or female) or any other assorted group of medieval characters. D&D anyone?

We geeks eventually grew out of this phase. Actually, no we didn't--which brings me to the point of this post. One of my geek buddies (Michael Ball) has gone and done the worst thing a medieval geek can do. He wrote a book about it.

Mike's first fiction book is titled The Stone Men. It is an excellent short story with fantastic illustrations drawn by Christopher Bort. Check it out. And, bewaare, the stone men are coming...

Map of Science

2009-03-19T18:13:00.006-04:00

This is a great graphic overview of the increasing complexity and interdiscplinary nature of scientific inquiry. (As a side note, it also shows that the social sciences play a much larger role in science than typically acknowledged.) This graph was part of a recent article published in PLoS ONE on 11 March 2009.

Title: Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science Johan Bollen1*, Herbert Van de Sompel1, Aric Hagberg2#, Luis Bettencourt2,3#, Ryan Chute1#, Marko A. Rodriguez2, Lyudmila Balakireva1

Great Blog: Social Media Today

2009-03-19T07:31:00.002-04:00

When people take time to post a comment on this blog, I always take the time to read about their work. Recently, Tom Mandel posted a comment on "Is Foucault a Complexity Scientist?"

One of the blogs on his site is Social Media Today. This is a great site because it is part of the latest trends in internet life. But, it is also an observer of these trends. In short, it is part of the latest movement known as e-science.

As much as I enjoy the web, I find myself in that endless double-bind of participant and researcher. I am fascinated with the web, and yet my researcher side is always asking: What is going on here? Why am I participating in all this? What is this all about? But, no sooner do I ask such questions when I make another click and go: Wow, this is really cool and I've got to tell someone about this new technology or social network, or blog, etc, etc, etc, ugh!

It is because of my double-bind that I really like the blog, Social Media Today. It is a participant in and researcher of the latest trends in information and the forthcoming Web 2.0. Very good stuff for those complexity scientists and sociologists interested in life on the web and where things are going.

Complexity 1001: One More Question

2009-03-17T19:04:00.004-04:00

Another overwhelming aspect to sticking my toe into the complexity rapids is the number of new concepts and terms I have encountered (from agent-based modeling to neural networking to fractal geometry, etc.). So -- in addition to a key/core reference(s) -- what would be the half dozen or so key concepts or terms I would need to master so I can build a foundation in understanding complexity science? I'm not sure why, but I imagine myself standing on a beach with dozens upon dozens of interesting looking shells -- and while I can picture myself picking up any one of them here and another one or two of them there -- and eventually working my way across all of the shells -- I suspect there would be some shells that are "basic" and thus fundamental to understanding all shells -- and I would appreciate your suggestions here as well.

Dr. Castellani's Reponse

Dear Complexity Challenged, I would start with my complexity science map. Here is why.

The map is conceptual.

Like you, I struggled early on to get a grasp of this field. It is so amazingly interdisciplinary and scattered that it is hard for the beginner (and even expert) to have a true appreciation for what is going on with the field as a whole. After years of struggling to obtain some type of synthesis, I realized that some degree of closure could be obtained if I looked for similarities across the wealth of research taking place. I asked myself, what concepts (be they theoretical or methodological) do all complexity scientists use? And, how do these concepts relate? Also, could I identify the leading scholars associated with these concepts? And, could I highlight one particular sub-concept or area of study with which each of these scholars could be identified? The result was the map.

So, long story short, I would work on mastering the concepts on the map. That will give you an excellent working knowledge and vocabulary sufficient to communicate with any complexity scientist, regardless of their otherwise intractable or incomprehensible research--hee haw!

Complexity 1001: Getting Started

2009-03-17T14:24:00.006-04:00

Professor Castellani: I want to begin a study of complexity -- as it applies to sociology and to issues of healthcare, but I am not sure where to begin. I've done a bit of googling, read through some of the materials on your site (loved your Complexity Science Map BTW), visited amazon.com -- and at the end of it all, feel a little overwhelmed.

I saw the link for Complexity 1001 and thought I might use it to jump start my learning.

Where would be a good place to start? What article (book chapter etc.) could you suggest -- something to get my feet wet. Perhaps from here I could raise a question or two for subsequent discussion, pick up another yet another suggesting resource or two, and go from there?

Thanks

DR. C'S RESPONSE

Dear Complexity Challenged, thanks for becoming part of this blog. I think the best way to "jump in and get your feet wet" is to take a historical macro-level approach and begin with two of the best known reviews of the field.

1. The first is Capra's The Web of Life. While written in 1997, this book still provides the best introductory review of complexity science and its historical roots--in particular, systems science, cybernetics and artificial intelligence and their links to the major themes in complexity science.

2. The second book is Waldrop's Complexity. This is another excellent book because it covers what Capra misses--the historical development of the Santa Fe Institute, the first and most important institute involved in the creation of complexity science and its most cutting-edge research. Almost every major figure in complexity science during the 1980s and 1990s had something to do with Santa Fe. Complexity is a bit journalistic and sensationalist (even gossipy) in style, but it really does give a good historical account of the early years of complexity science.

Most important about The Web of life and Complexity, they introduce you to all the major concepts of complexity science: emergence, self-organization, tipping-points, autopoiesis, self-organizing criticality, computational economics, cellular automata, agent-based modeling, fractals, chaos theory, networks, and so on.

These two books also introduce you to the major players during the 1980s and 1990s: from Holland and Kauffman to Prigogine and Bak to Matarana and Varela.

Once you have a basic sense of the field, you can move to a review of the methods of complexity science. Here is where things become more technical and less macro. You start to move down to the meso and even micro level, exploring specific topics like neural networks, agent-based modeling, the new science of networks, fractals, modeling complex systems, power laws, etc.

But, let's not get into the deep section of the pool too quick. I would get those two books and read them first.

Is Michel Foucault a Complexity Scientist?

2009-03-17T11:41:00.010-04:00

In 1999 I wrote an article for Studies in Symbolic Interaction titled, Michel Foucault and Symbolic Interactionism: The Making of a New Theory of Interaction. The article sits at the heart of the theoretical framework (social complexity theory) that Hafferty and I outline in our new book, Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Field of Inquiry. Our theoretical framework, in turn, is part of the SACS Toolkit, which is our new method for modeling complex social systems.

While it may seem odd to some, my journey into complexity science is through the work of Michel Foucault, particularly his later theory of social practice. For me, Foucault’s work has always been about complex social systems and their impact on individuals.

From Madness and Civilization to The Archeology of Knowledge to Discipline and Punish, what are Foucault’s books about? Think about it. At least theoretically and methodologically speaking, they are about complex social systems! Foucault is trying to understand, in post-structural terms, how systems go from one state to another—from one set of self-organizing relations to another. How, for example, does the care of mental disorders, prisoners, deviants, or the self in the west go from a medieval apparatus of care to a modern apparatus of care?

Given this orientation, could we not call Foucault’s work the study of tipping points? Is not Foucault studying how complex social systems evolve over time to become something new, where they suddenly shift from one self-organizing form to another as a function of some type of punctuated equilibrium, some type of major phase shift? Is that not what Foucault’s whole discourse is about, along with the impact these shifting systems have on individuals and their care of self?

Also, could we not call his early work (up to Archeology of Knowledge) a top-down approach to system modeling? Something similar to Luhmann’s view of systems? I mean, is not Foucault, at least early on, trying to understand how systems change without having to call upon some micro-level theory of agency? Something Luhmann and Parsons and others tried to do? Is Foucault not also trying to understand the system within the confines of the system itself?

Then, beginning with Discipline and Punish and his interviews in Power and Knowledge, is not Foucault suddenly grounding his complex systems view in social practice? Suddenly shifting to a bottom-up perspective? Is that not what his methodological shift from archaeology to genealogy is all about? Top-down to bottom-up? A macro to a micro level shift in orientation?

Think about it? How would Foucault sound if he talked about dispositifs and apparatus as complex systems? What if he talked about apparatus which obey their own internal logic as emergent self-organizing systems? What if Foucault talked about his post-structuralism as a way of talking about history as changing dynamic systems that do more than just follow the dialectic? What if he talked about complex social systems that evolve over time along multiple trajectories? Suddenly his idea of systems containing their own resistance (his Nietzschian theory of power) makes more sense: we are talking about the multiplicity of systems, differentiation and feedback loops. And, suddenly his ideas would not seem so unique—at least by today’s knowledge of complexity science. Suddenly his ideas sound less structural and more systems-oriented.

Because this is a blog, I will not blag on too much. So, just consider one of Foucault’s key concepts, the dispositif. For Foucault, this concept forms the field of relations in which his work, up to the end, is situated within.

Foucault states: "What I’m trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical propositions, moral and philanthropic propositions--in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the
elements of the apparatus [dispositif]. The apparatus [the grid of intelligibility] itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements. Secondly, what I am trying to identify in this apparatus is precisely the nature of the connections that can exist between these heterogeneous elements (Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, 1980, p. 194)."

As this quote shows, Foucault's work is always about mapping the grid of intelligibility (the dispositif) for some complex system in historical time-—be the system medicine, mental health, the social sciences, criminal justice, psychoanalysis, religion, or government. For Foucault, the dispositif is a system’s self-organizing order of things, its field of organizing practices. But this dispositif is not a totalizing system of relations as in the dialectic. Nor is it something the historian simply uncovers. It is both the interpretive framework that the historian imposes upon the discourses of the past (which is why Foucault often refers to his works as fictions, 1991, p. 33) and the relations that exist between the various discursive and nondiscursive heterogeneous elements making up the field of organizing practices—I mean, does that not sound like 2nd order cybernetics or sociocybernetics? The dispositif is a system of strategies that exist as practice, both on the part of the historian and on the part of the period in question. The dispositif isn’t found within some external structure or within the heads of particular controlling agents. It is within the practice of practice itself. It is fragmented, disjointed and broken, and yet inter-related, unified and organized. It is not a Parsionian system that exists as homeostasis, which then requires us to explain how change happens. It is a changing system where we question how order itself is possible.

Again, this is just a thought. But, it does open up the possibilities for some incredible connections between the last twenty years of sociological inquiry and the new science of complexity. To see a more thorough argument of my point of how Foucault can be used to build a theory of social complexity, see our new book, Sociology and Complexity Science.

2009-03-14T08:48:00.005-04:00

I've got a bunch of new geek t-shirts at my CAFE PRESS STORE. Check em out. I particularly like this one and the irony of it.

Factory Wiz

Complexity 1001

2009-03-13T14:59:00.007-04:00

Starting today, I will be featuring a new segment on this blog, called Complexity 1001. Like the name sounds, Complexity 1001 will provide an undergraduate (college) level introduction to complexity science and, related, the intersection of complexity science with the social sciences, specifically sociology.

I have asked a few friends who are new to complexity science (a couple profs and a couple students) to post any questions, concerns, or issues they have as they learn about and apply the tools of complexity science.

I also welcome anyone else to post questions they would like answered. You can email me at factory.as@gmail.com or you can post a question in any of the recent Complexity 1001 postings.

Any time I respond to a post, the heading of my post will always be Complexity 1001. This way you can find older postings as the months go by.

Finally, make sure you sign up for a posting feed or all comments feed so you get Complexity 1001 sent directly to your email or whatever place you daily go to see what's happening on the web!

So, let the online course and the postings begin.

Reprise: Intersecting the Study of Social and Complex Networks

2009-03-10T08:52:00.006-04:00

Several blogs ago I posted on the need for researchers to do more work intersecting the new science of networks (complexity science) with the sociological literature on social networks, in particular the global network literature. Some sociologists do not see much to be gained from such a merger. For those resistant to the idea or unclear as to what such a merger is about, you need to read Vega-Redondo's Complex Social Networks.

The purpose of this book is to outline, in detail, the avenues of study that emerge from the intersection of the new science of networks and social network analysis.

Rather than going on, I recommend you go to Josep Pujol's excellent review of the book, published at JASSS (Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation)

One note is, however, necessary. Given that my blog caters to social science students and researchers new to complexity science, it is worth mentioning that Vega-Redondo's book primarily makes its case through mathematics. Do not let that scare you away. It is something social scientists have to get used to: complexity science makes extensive use of mathematics to make its arguments. Social scientists are often poorly trained to deal with equation-based modeling. They receive little training outside the study of statistics. We need to get past this hurdle to adopt a much broader and stronger toolset. Having said that, here is one such opportunity to learn something new. Your hard work moving through such a book is worth the effort!

Complexity 5

2009-03-04T08:51:00.005-05:00

Okay, so I just posted on Gershenson's blog, COMPLEXES and now I am posting on his recent book, Complexity 5.

I have to admit that this is the exact book I have wanted to write myself. It is a series of overviews (interview style) of leading thinkers in the field of complexity science.

What I particularly like about the book is that it interviews people who other complexity scientists view as TOP NOTCH--rather than the same list of popular people who often get far too much attention. I am particularly excited to see Nigel Gilbert, Paul Cilliers, and Bar-Yam in the list, as well as Melanie Mitchell. There are lots of women in complexity science who have yet to get their dues, and so this is great! (I cannot help making the last point, I am a sociologist.)

Here is the complete list of contributors: Peter M. Allen, Philip W. Anderson, W. Brian Arthur, Yaneer Bar-Yam, Eric Bonabeau, Paul Cilliers, Jim Crutchﬁeld, Bruce Edmonds, Nigel Gilbert, Hermann Haken, Francis Heylighen, Bernardo A. Huberman, Stuart A. Kauffman, Seth Lloyd, Gottfried Mayer-Kress, Melanie Mitchell, Edgar Morin, Mark Newman, Grégoire Nicolis, Jordan B. Pollack, Peter Schuster, Ricard V. Solé, Tamás Vicsek, Stephen Wolfram.

Great Blog: Complexes

2009-03-04T08:07:00.004-05:00

I have been following another excellent blog: COMPLEXES.

Complexes is run by Carlos Gershenson, who is a bit of an iconoclast. He has very broad interests in complexity, computer engineering, artificial life, and complexity-based art. He is also the book review editor for Artificial Life and the editor-in-chief of Complexity Digest--the leading compendium of all things complexity on the web.

(As a side note, if you do not have Complexity Digest bookmarked, please do so now. Also, Gottfried Mayer, the founding editor of Complexity Digest and leading systems/complexity scientist, passed away last month.)

Complexes is a fantastic blog because of the range of topics it addresses; and because Gershenson writes in a fresh way, with an insider's insights into various concepts, tools and techniques.

Also, check out his art.

I highly recommend the blog!

Widening the study of global networks

2009-03-03T13:05:00.004-05:00

It is time to widen the complexity science vocabulary on global networks. Two rather disparate literature currently exist:

First, there is the new science of networks, and its very specific focus, web science. This literature is dominated by the work of Watts, Newman, Barabasi and scholars in the natural sciences. Web science is a specific focus, examining the world wide web and internet.

Second, there is the globalization literature, and its very specific focus on network society. This literature is dominated by the work of Wallerstein (world systems theory), Manuel Castells (global network society) and John Urry (mobile society and global complexity).

While these two literature are outstanding, not much has been done to bridge them. The closest example from the globalization side is Urry's work in Global Complexity. Related is Wellman's work on web science.

Again, these two literature differ in scholarly background--the first comes from physics and the natural sciences, while the second comes from sociology and political science.

They have lots to say to one another. The global network society literature has a lot to say on the social factors within which global networks are currently situated. The new science of networks has a lot to say about how the structure and dynamics of global networks work--for example, see Barabasi's recent article in nature on mobility.

Disserations, masters theses and funded research await those willing to integrate these two viewpoints in empirically grounded ways.

What are we? Complexity science, complexity theory, complex systems, complex self-organizing systems, etc????

2009-03-01T14:47:00.004-05:00

Complexity science has been around long enough for the field to finally settle on a name. Systems science has a clear name, as does cybernetics and agent-based modeling. Complexity science needs similar clarity.

To demonstrate the current lack of clarity, do a basic search on Wikipedia, or examine the various web trackers. It becomes quickly clear that fuzziness and chaos abound--and I do not use these terms in a positive way.

Not having a name is a problem for a new science. It makes it hard for people to know what they are doing.

I strongly recommend complexity science as a name. Here is why

Not Complexity theory: Complexity is more than a theory. In fact, i would like someone to show what complexity theory is? I have yet to see a theory of complexity. I have seen complexity theories about evolution (Kauffman); social systems (Luhmann); organizations (Cilliers). But, I have not seen a complexity theory. No such thing exists.

Not complex self-organizing systems: Of all the possible terms, this one comes close, but it is too cumbersome. Complexity science is definitely the study of complex, self-organizing systems. However, complexity science is broader than just self-organizing systems. It deals with a variety of complex systems. Also, complexity science is cleaner and terse.

Not Chaos theory: While complexity science is indebted to chaos theory, it is something else. It is interested in organized chaos.

Not Agent-based modeling: While complexity science makes use of agent-based modeling, complexity science is more than just method.

Not e-science or web-science: This isn't going to work because the former is too substantively focused and the second is all method and often not systems oriented.

Not Post-systems science or Post-cybernetics: Complexity science is indebted to systems science and cybernetics--these fields are the historical lineage upon which complexity science is based. But, complexity science makes a break with these two fields, turning to a much larger literature to define its theories, methods and substantive problems.

Not Complexity: Complexity science is not just complexity. This term is too wide and ambiguous--we have always had complexity.

Not Computational Complexity: Computational complexity is too focused: it has to do with computational problem solving, not the study of complex systems.

And still more:The other reason complexity science is preferrable is because it separates the field from metaphorical, political and spiritual uses of this new science. A major criticism of complexity science today, particularly in the management literature, is a lack of rigor. Can a car company really be autopoietic? I doubt it. Is emergence some kind of quasi-spiritual mysterious force? If it is, then science might as well stop studying crowd behavior and the standing ovation problem.

Complexity science is a science. Let's call it that.

What Does 6-Degrees of Separation Mean? Or, why sociology is important to complexity science

2009-02-27T16:27:00.006-05:00

In the 2002 January/February issue of Society, Judith Kleinfeld published an interesting article titled "THE SMALL WORLD PROBLEM." Kleinfeld's article is an excellent review and critique of the small-world problem--the idea that, in very large social networks everyone is connected to everyone else in the world by 6 or fewer links. The reason: networks are not random; instead, they contain weak-ties sufficient to link up everyone.

More important, Kleinfeld's article demonstrates the importance of sociology to complexity science. While physics can be used to study society, it needs sociology. Social systems are not physical systems--for the record, Watts agrees with this point (See Watts 2004).

For example, while a poor, female living in Mexico may be separated by less than six-degrees from a rich male living in Germany, it is very unlikely this poor female can make use of her links the same way someone of a higher socioeconomic status could. Sociology (and social network analysis, specifically, along with the study of kinship networks and health) has a lot to say about the quality of the connections in large social networks--above and beyond such terms as weak and strong ties, triangles, centroids, clusters, etc.

A whole language (all of it sociological, and much of it within social network analysis) awaits to be intersected with the new science of networks. This language includes community health, inequality, social stratification, medical sociology, gender, occupations, etc.

To learn more about the sociological approach to the new science of networks, see Barry Wellman's website and the INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS, See also Kleinfeld's COULD IT BE A BIG WORLD?

What Happened to Neural Networking?

2009-02-23T08:19:00.004-05:00

NOTE: This post is one of my rants. It is not based on serious data analysis. Instead, it is an impression I have had for a while. If you think I am wrong, let me know. If you think I am right, let me know--that would make my day! ;)
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Back in the 1990s artificial neural networking was everywhere. The number of conferences, journal articles and grants devoted to its exploration was phenomenal. Then, suddenly, it seems, everyone moved on. Now, the rage is social networks.

I am not saying neural networks has been completely dropped. There is still some exciting stuff going on. But, it just never got integrated into the mainstay of complexity science method the way one would think.

And yet, neural networking is a major line of thinking in complexity science. As shown in my map of complexity, cybernetics and artificial intelligence (specifically distributed artificial intelligence)

One particular area that has yet to be fully appreciated by complexity scientists is Kohonen's self-organizing map--known as the SOM.

The SOM represents the latest advance in what can be called "qualitative computing."

By this term I mean that, the SOM is ready-made for finding nonobvious patterns in very large, complex digital, numerical databases. However, unlike statistics, the SOM is not driven by traditional hypotheses; it is not governed by the linear model; it searches for patterns of difference rather than aggregate norms and trends; it focuses on the relationships between conceptual indicators rather than the most powerful single variables; and, most important, while “intelligent,” it is actually dumb: the SOM does not tell you why it arrived at the results it gives you. There are no t-tests of significance to tell you what you found.

Instead, the SOM's output is open-ended, visual, and intuitive. To make sense of the nonobvious patterns and trends found, the researcher must apply traditional qualitative techniques--including coding, memo writing, and theoretical sampling. The qualitative orientation of the SOM does not mean one does not use statistics or formal mathematical modeling. I use these techniques all the time with it.

But, it does mean that the SOM is both computational and qualitative--a rare thing in method.

The SOM can do all of this because it is essentially a data reduction technique--while preserving the complexity of a system, it reduces its complexity to a 2-dimensional grid, onto which it projects the nuanced relationships between a set of factors. One combs this grid and the underlying factor structure to determine the dominant ways a data set clusters and the set of factors responsible for this clustering.

Familiar examples of the SOM are facial pattern recognition, analysis of disease trends, tumor detection, and primitive learning in robots and smart machines (See Kohonen 2001).

So, why aren't complexity scientists, particularly those in the social sciences, using the SOM? I do not know. Perhaps there is just so much going on that we have not reached an integration point. A method is explored, applied, developed and then everyone moves on to the next big method. Complexity science has not reached the point where multiple methods are combined to create a toolkit.

The other reason I think the SOM is not widely used, particularly amongst social scientists, is because of the geek factor involved. For example, I run Kohonen's free-ware program--the SOM Toolkit--in Matlab. If you cannot program your own neural net or you are not comfortable with Matlab or other programs with a high geek factor, it can be a bit overwhelming making use of this method. That, more than anything, is probably the unspoken reason neural nets and the SOM have not made a major splash in the social sciences. They are not overly easy to use.

They also do not fit the traditional paradigm of being numerical and quantative. Social scientists have an emotional breakdown when a method cannot be classified as qualitative or quantitative. Worse, if a numerical method does not have a t-test or some exact statistical way of determining the significance of its results, they just lose it! :)

Anyway, it just seems the SOM can be used to advance complexity science. For example, it can be used to explore how people cluster in a social network; it can be used to create conceptual maps of a complex systems; it can be used with agent-based modeling to improve the intelligence of agents, etc.

Again, I am not saying that the above types of work are not being done. I'm just saying that it seems more could be done.

What do you think?

The Complexity Blog: By Graduate Students for Graduate Students

2009-02-20T13:10:00.009-05:00

I have been following an excellent complexity science blog for the past couple of weeks. It is called COMPLEXITY BLOG and it is run by two graduate students at the University of Michigan, who are affiliated with the university's international and renown Center for the Study of Complex Systems.

The two students are Kenneth Zick and Aaron Bramson--although the majority of recent posts are all by Bramson.

What is excellent about the site (even for undergraduates) is its cross-disciplinary viewpoint and breadth! For example, in addition to the blog, they provide a host of additional resources, which includes just about everything a student needs--from maps of the schools with complexity science programs to an excellent glossary to a good overview of all the major centers in complexity. I looked over their stuff and it is authoritative. You will not be led in the wrong direction.

I strongly recommend including this blog in your favorites! I put it in mine.

Scholar Highlight: Fritjof Capra

2009-02-20T09:16:00.012-05:00

If you are looking for an excellent book that summarizes the paradigm orientation of complexity science, your best place to start is with Fritjof Capra's The Web of Life.

Fritjof Capra is a physicist who has written several excellent books on complexity, the most noteworthy of which are The Web of Life, mentioned above, and The Hidden Connections.

While Capra is a major historical figure in the making of complexity science, he is not part of the Santa Fe inner circle or any poarticular European complexity science group. As shown on my map of complexity science (CLICK HERE TO SEE MAP), Capra is more of a systems science scholar. In fact, I place him on my map in ecological systems thinking.

He is, however, a leading authority on the makings of complexity science. For example, my new book, Sociology and Complexity Science, owes a tremendous debt to Capra's work. In fact, in many ways, my above map is a visualization of Capra's Web of Life.

In addition to his knowledge of complexity science, Capra is also unique because he sees this new science very much in political terms. To get a good sense of his perspective, watch his movie (which he made with his brother) titled Mind Walk. In particular, Capra sees ecological systems thinking as the scientific salvation for humanity--the ying to the yang of reductionistic, economically driven, anti-environmental, modern science. (By the way, the above sentence is a play off of Capra's Tao of Physics--a bit of geek humor if you will)

While many complexity scientists embrace (and actively work to address) Capra's concerns about the environment, most do not view complexity science in such politically, spiritually or culturally charged terms.

It is Capra's fusion of complexity science, ecological awareness and grass-roots activism that makes him world-famous. It is also this perspective that makes him controversial amongst the complexity science community.

It is also because of this provocative thinking that you should read his work. I cannot tell you how many times I have read The Web of Life.

While I do not approach complexity science as a political, spiritual or cultural movement, I am one of Capra's biggest fans! And I do think that systems thinking can help us understand more fully the complex, global world in which we live. In fact, my teaching statement, as a professor, is to help students use systems thinking to understand more fully the complex, global world in which they live.

For more information, got to Capra's website
*

CALRESCO: A Good Educational Website on Complexity

2009-02-19T08:17:00.002-05:00

Several years ago I came across an excellent educational website on complexity--at a time when few such websites existed. In the late 1990s you basically had the Santa Fe Institute Website and a few other things.

Then came along CALRESCO, which stands for the Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept for Self-Organizing Systems. If you typed on Google or any other web browser words like "complexity" or "complex systems" the top hit was from CALRESCO.

Now, Wikipedia dominates, which is a good thing. Survivial of the fittest! However, the drawback is that an excellent educational website is getting less attention.

What makes CALRESCO so good is the level of detail. When I was first learning the numerous concepts of complexity science, CALRESCO not only provided excellent information, but it had lots of papers I could download to read, and they were at a basic level without being basic--does that make sense?

Anyway, if you want to get a good grasp on the basic cocnepts of complexity science, I recommend making this part of your favorites list.

Excellence: Springer Complexity Series

2009-02-18T13:55:00.001-05:00

If you are looking for excellent books and journals on complexity, you have to check out the Springer Complexity Series

I took the following paragraph directly from their website:

About this series
Future scientific and technological developments in many fields will necessarily depend upon coming to grips with complex systems. Such systems are complex in both their composition (typically many different kinds of components interacting with each other and their environments on multiple levels) and in the rich diversity of behavior of which they are capable. The Understanding Complex Systems series (UCS) promotes new strategies and paradigms for understanding and realizing applications of complex systems research in a wide variety of fields and endeavors. UCS is explicitly transdisciplinary. It has three main goals: First, to elaborate the concepts, methods and tools of self-organizing dynamical systems at all levels of description and in all scientific fields, especially newly emerging areas within the Life, Social, Behavioral, Economic, Neuro- and the Cognitive Sciences (and derivatives thereof): Second, to encourage novel applications of these ideas in various fields of Engineering and Computation such as Robotics, Nanotechnology and Informatics: Third, to provide a single forum within which commonalities and differences in the workings of complex systems may be discerned, hence leading to deeper insight and understanding. UCS will publish monographs and selected edited contributions from specialized conferences and workshops aimed at communicating new findings to a large transdisciplinary audience.

Springer Book on Sociology and Complexity Science

2009-02-18T13:47:00.004-05:00

My new book, Sociology and Complexity Science: A New Field of Inquiry was released by Springer on 4 Feb 2009. The book is part of Springer's complexity series.

To go to the book at Springer, CLICK HERE

Wikipedia Article on Sociology and Complexity Science

2009-02-18T13:43:00.003-05:00

If you want a quick overview of sociology and complexity science and its major areas of study, see the Wikipedia article I recently posted on Wikipedia.

Complexity Map posted on Wikipedia

2009-02-18T13:02:00.001-05:00

If you type in COMPLEXITY at Wikipedia, you will find my new map of complexity science there along with the article.

CLICK HERE TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ON COMPLEXITY
The map seems to be of use to people. The article is getting about 500 hits a day and the electronic map is getting about 50 hits a day. I hope it is of use to people. If you have questions about the map, post them here.

New map of complexity science

2009-02-18T12:58:00.002-05:00

I just put together a new internet-based map of the field of complexity science, including all its major areas of study, leading scholars and intellectual lineage. It is an excellent resource for learning about complexity. In fact, I will make use of this map throughout my postings. CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE MAP

Complexity Science Geek T-Shirts

2009-01-23T08:53:00.003-05:00

Hello fellow complexity science geeks.

You have got to check out the complexity science t-shirts I put on Cafe Press. In the vernacular of the 1970s, "they totally rock!" Take a look. Also, if you have a t-shirt idea you would like me to make, post a comment. Or, just post a comment on what you think of the t-shirts.

Programs in Complexity Science, Network Analysis or Agent-Based Modeling

2009-01-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of the degree programs students can complete to earn a degree is complexity science, agent-based modeling or network analysis. Please, please, please post any program--undergrad, masters, doctorate or certificate--of which you know.

Brian