Jean Boulton – The Dao of Complexity (Alan Hudson’s highlights)

I am not too concerned here with crystallising definitions; rather, I want to show that all these concepts share a common interest in asking how the universe and everything in it exists, changes, connects and so on. My focus is on exploring the nature of reality, the nature of being, the way things are – all slightly different expressions, but homing in on the same territory. (p.9)

The link between how we theorise about the nature of the world (our ontology) and how we believe we can know about it (our epistemology) leads to the methodological question as to how we then choose to investigate it and how we then choose to act. These need to be self-consistent. Otherwise, we risk missing the very information that is key to furthering our understanding (p.11)

So if the world is complex, then choosing methods of investigation that ignore or slide over that complexity is unlikely to surface the very features that may be key to understanding what is happening (p.11)

Viewing the world as complex, uncertain and emergent (a complexity ontology), rather than objective, predictable and controllable (a mechanistic ontology), has a significant impact on how we choose “ways of knowing”, and how we subsequently work out what to do and how to do it (p.11)

Quantum physics messes up everything ontologically: Quantum physics also changes the game when it comes to determinism. As I describe in more detail in Smoke and Mirrors, properties are held in the relationship between things, not in the things themselves. Properties are context dependent and paradoxical – showing different “faces” depending on what is interacting with what (p.20)

The idea of things being better thought of as events – some long, some small – is the stuff of process philosophies, forms the basis of process complexity and is inherent to daoism (p.29)

Prigogine, however, realized that for open systems, systems that can interact with their surroundings, it is possible for form or structure – in the sense of patterns – to emerge.

What particular patterns emerge depends on history and context and is reliant on the particular details that happen to be present. It is the openness to the surroundings that provides the fuel to allow the creation of more sophisticated and complex structures (p.33)

Recognizing that open systems, be they living or not, can demonstrate a tendency for patterns in order to emerge, was a huge realization (p.34)

Open systems can exchange energy, information and matter with their surroundings. This openness is necessary for patterns to sustain, but in addition, there needs to be some sort of relational feedback mechanisms between constituents, which can lead to the emergence and stabilizing of self-organizing, self-regulating patterns (p.34)

the three most important reasons why we need to bury the mechanical worldview is because: a) most situations are open to their wider context, b) things are messy, and c) things are interconnected or, to us the Daoist phrase, are ‘mutually entailed’ (p.36)

The Latin word complexus means that which is woven together, and it neatly captures the essential quality of complexity. What is the nature of this interwoven muddle, this interconnecting, undisciplined connectedness of which we are a part? This is an ontological, indeed a metaphysical question that seeks to understand “the nature of things”. And I argue that this quest is a necessary practice for all of us, not merely an amusing debate for philosophers, but a central grounding for how to live well. Our beliefs about the nature of being, about how the world works, about what creates change or stability, drive our methods and behaviors. Without addressing these underlying assumptions and beliefs, we can do no more than strive to improve that which we were already doing (p.39)

In this section, I consider the implications not only of recognizing a world in process, as did Prigogine, but a world of processes, a world of patterns. The next piece, A Complex View of Process, considers what it means to position complexity as a processual ontology. In The Essential Conditions for Complexity, I then discuss the conditions necessary for complexity – openness, diversity and reflexive relationships. In Characteristically Complex, I briefly introduce the characteristics of a processual complex world and explain how they fit together. These characteristics are: systemic, patterned, path-dependent, particular, punctuated, paradoxical and emergent (p.42)

Many of the features I describe are not radically different from those you may have already come across if you have some familiarity with complexity thinking. But there is, I suggest, a greater focus on process, pattern and paradox, a rethinking of the characteristics of complexity and paradox, a rethinking of the characteristics of a complex world in process and a drilling down into the nature of emergence, patterning and path-dependency (p.43)

The idea of process complexity not only captures a view of the world as always becoming, but also leaves behind the idea of a world made of concrete things. In this sense, it goes further than a dynamical view. A dynamical view can offer up a world that changes due to the complex interactions between things. At its core, though, still lurks the image of a world of substance, a world that is real, concrete, and objectively there. Process complexity goes further than this and brings an end to “things” (p.45)

Thirdly, it [process complexity] suggests that “things” are best thought of as patterns of relationships; they are constituted through the interrelationships between their constituents. The language of some schools of Buddhism refers to such patterns as empty, in the sense that they do not have an enduring existence, they are not fixed entities, but are held in place through the relations between their constitutive elements (p.46)

What are the underpinning necessities that lead to and engender the qualities or characteristics of the complex world – its processual, patterned, responsive, paradoxical, emergent nature? What leads to the emergence and stabilization of patterns of relationships? (p.51)

Jean Boulton separates conditions from the characteristics that they produce

Three conditions for complexity to be fully realized are open boundaries, diversity, reflective interrelationships between constituents. (p.52)

Equally, if ingredients are not diverse, but are all identical, like the molecules in hydrogen gas, then nothing substantive can change. Thirdly, if interactions and connections are not reflexive, but fixed – such as those between the rods and cogs of a weaver machine, or indeed those between molecules in a container of gas – then we will not find the features we expect of a complex world (p.52)

A note on boundaries: In the example of the playground, it will be relatively straightforward to define boundaries, but in general, the boundaries of a complex situation are themselves a self-organizing property (p.54)

Essentially, then, these are the three essential ingredients, the necessary conditions for a situation to display the characteristic features of a complex world: 1) a set of diverse and potentially diffuse constituents; 2) interacting in reflective, diverse, and varying ways; and 3) situated in a broader context to which it is open and connected (p.54)

In the last piece, I described the conditions that engender complexity. These are openness, messiness or diversity, and reflexive relationships. In this piece, I want to explore how these conditions lead to the characteristics of complex situations. These characteristics are systemic, patterned, particular, path-dependent, paradoxical, punctuated, and emergent (p.57)

Patterning is the binding thread of process complexity. It offers an image of the world as one of emerging, stabilizing, and subsequently dissolving patterns (p.57)

The next quality is paradox. This is a quality of the complex world that is sometimes overlooked. Paradox is an ambiguous term in itself. I am signifying that the complex world does not reduce down to a description that is used to describe the world. Paradox, I am arguing, is an ontological feature of the nature of things exacerbated by what happens at the quantum level (p.58)

Finally, I underline the systemic nature of a complex world. It is only very rarely that we can reduce our descriptions of the world into separable factors whose impact is additive. The world is deeply woven together through all its aspects. This applies at all levels … We cannot explain what happens by separating out these forces. We cannot ignore how their interweaving may evolve and be affected by new conditions. The world is radically systemic. That is to say, there is interweaving down to the smallest scale (p.58)

The approach I present is not radically different from the view of complexity that has come before, but there is arguably more emphasis on process, paradox, and patterns. I have also distinguished between the conditions that lead to complexity and the characteristics of complex situations that result; as I have argued, to mix these two can be considered a category error (pp.58-9)

These distributed dispersed systemic qualities are often labelled as emergent. They become established only as a result of the complex interwoven interactions and interpenetrations of the constituents (p.63)

What’s wrong with talking about systems as opposed to talking about systemic patterns? Finally, I want to explore why it can be unhelpful to talk about systems and why it may be preferable to talk about situations being systemic (p.63)

While systemic qualities do emerge and may become stable, these qualities cannot be cut away from or disentangled from the relating, diverse, interconnected messiness out of which they emerged and which causes them to sustain. You cannot really act on ‘the system’; you can only, in the main, impact individuals and the connections between them. As you can see, I am wary of the word system. It suggests something that exists, something that can be designed and managed, acted upon or changed (p.64)

[So this is about the systeming or the emergence of systemic patterns, but not about systems as things in themselves]

So when at all possible, without tying myself in linguistic knots, I prefer to talk of the real world in terms of systemic patterns, since this feels much more tentative and “allowing” than describing aspects of the social and natural world in terms of “systems” (p.65)

The term pattern in the context of complexity refers to the systemic outcome of mutually reinforcing relationships [which are themselves processes] that are temporarily or spatially situated (p.67)

In many ways, I would prefer to use the word patterning to pattern. It conveys to an even greater degree that sense of something temporary, tentative and subjective, subject to wobblings and variations, less than definite (p.68)

This description of the forest captures the tension between – the dance between – diversity and efficiency, structure and change, stability and creativity. And it emphasizes the way that the ‘unit’ of interest, the unit of agency, is not the species or individual animal or plant, but the ecological pattern (p.69)

[I’m not sure about that. Does the ecological pattern have agency? Not sure]

At the same time, there may be other aspects that are maturing and effective, such as functioning laws and systems of governance. There may be yet further aspects that are emerging and forming, like new civil society or new entrance to certain markets, fueled by opportunities created by new technology. Thus, the differing life cycle stages undertaken in a more stepwise fashion in an isolated forest may, in social settings, overlap, intertwine, and mutually impact each other (p.69)

[Review the Snowden critique]

The event of a new pattern can shift the existing pattern

Maybe it is more accurate to think about large patterns and small patterns – or long-lived or more fleeting patterns – than to speak about patterns and events as if they are necessarily different in kind (p.71)

The description of the shaping of the future as a dance between patterns and events can be extended and reframed in a processual view as a dance between long patterns and short patterns, or indeed between long events and short events (p.71)

Patterns, I am arguing, constitute our world, and articulating the way in which patterns form and dissolve provides a powerful narrative of change (p.71)

In living systems, the behavior at a given time is partly determined by memory and partly by the anticipation of the future … In this sense, the future contributes to the present (p.74 – Prigogine quote)

There is more than one future, but not an infinite number; the ‘path is made through walking; (p.75)

The implications of path dependency: seed the system with good ingredients (p.76)

History shows us how the accumulation of power or wealth can shape society in such a way that things become very hard to change, as discussed in The Dynamics of Pattern Forming and Pattern Dissolving. (p.76)

Those working with complexity perspectives do also focus on patterns of relationships but are just as interested in spotting any signs of instability or signs of newness. Complexity theory does not, as a general rule, indicate that the present is a good indicator of the future (p.80)

There is a fundamental irreducibility to reality that we can never dispel … Reality is lost by being abstracted (Camaren Peter, p.86)

I describe in Polarity’s Paradox and the Middle Ground, an approach to working with polar opposites and encouraging a third way to emerge, a sort of transcending, both-and, integrative insight or outcome. This contemplative process is where mystery can enter, the crack in the logic which allows the light in, to misquote Leonard Cohen. This is not a compromise, not merely a question of finding a midpoint between opposites. It is the surfacing of something excitingly, radically new. This is known as Hegel’s dialectic, an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a proposition and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (p.86)

Much more could be said about paradox. I refer you to Chris Mowles’ book, Managing in Uncertainty, Complexity and the Paradoxes of Organizational Life (p.86)

One must not think ill of paradox, for paradox is the passion of thought, and thinking without the paradox is like the lover without passion. The ultimate paradox of thought is to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think. (Soren Kierkegaard, p.86)

In my mind, the systemic qualities displayed by ants and murmuring birds, qualities that exist only in the collective, are a weak form of emergence in that they remain within expected limits (p.88)

The examples described thus far are all examples, some reversible, some not reversible, of emergence as a description of systemic properties held by the whole. However, to muddy the waters, emergent properties, in my view, are not always systemic (p.88)

Radical emergence can occur in situations when there is an addition or subtraction to the dimensions of the problem, such as a new technology or the extinction or exodus of some of the ingredients. This change to the dimensions can re-engineer the whole landscape and add to this a novel future where novel features can emerge (pp.88-89)

So what emerges when we connect at a deeper level? The nature of the new behaviour is arguably different in kind from that which emerges when people in a group remain distant and polite. I’m going to call this processual emergence as it occurs when we humans act more like porous interwoven processes, more like ripples than individual units (p.90)

Recently a colleague sent me a paper by Otto Scharmer and Eva Pomeroy and I realised that my musings about processual emergence chime with their description of trans-subjective knowing. This is a knowing that we experience via the “social field” as “coming through us but is not of us”. I am enticed to dig further (p.90)

This is a very different use of language from that which is common in the West. One further difference to note: there is no distinction between nouns and verbs [in Chinese or in the Dao de Jing]. Thus Ames and Hall often translate Dao as way-making, a process, rather than way, a noun. Presenting Dao as dynamic has a very different significance in that it doesn’t infer the way is a thing (p.100)

Ames and Hall say that integrity is consummate relatedness. I like this. It evokes the sense for me that coming together is more than connection or interconnection. The word consummate captures for me that poetic sense of wholeness that can emerge and give something meaning or feels meaningful. It is elegant, poised and has a sense of exquisite rightness (p.106)

The same applies to stars and galaxies and rocks, which equally shift, age and morph into other things. The emphasis made here is a reminder that those things we call things are, in general, constituted by the relationships between the elements of which they are made and by their relationships with the wider context (p.107)

Ames and Hall state that the defining teaching of the Dao De Jing is how to make this life significant. We do this by getting the most out of what each of us is. A person is a dynamic pattern of personal, social and natural relationships. The deepening of those relationships that in sum constitute us as a person is a profoundly co-creative process of doing and undoing, of shaping and being shaped (p.111)

Distinguishing, as per Edgar Morin, between general complexity and restricted complexity

General complexity is on the real-life situation itself, rather than the simplified representation of it

Stacey and Cilliers, in their different ways, focused on the social world. There was recognition that, for patterns to emerge, situations need to be open to their wider surroundings, and there must exist a level of diversity and variation amongst the constituents. There was also an irreducible, entwined interrelationship between the micro and the macro (p.127)

Morin quote: The knowledge of the parts is not enough, but the knowledge of the whole is not enough, if one ignores the parts

Mary Parker Follett explores the idea that difference, including conflictual difference, opens the way for new norms to emerge. I particularly like the emphasis she placed on embracing conflict and how she understands how the positive role for conflict requires not seeing the self as fixed (p.143)

Conflict is generative, she feels, and new ways forward can emerge as a result. In contrast, compromise, where it may engender a safe outcome, does not take us into new territory and does not invite novelty. (p.143)

This strikes me as a very interesting insight. If we are fixed, then the best we can do is to find a compromise, as I cannot change, and neither can you. If we are not fixed, but always changing, then we can engage with our own inner conflicts, at the same time as responding to any mutual differences or disagreements between us (p.143)

Joanna Macy investigated the ideas embedded in early Buddhist teachings. She focused on the notion of dependent co-arising, which presents causality “not as a function of power inherent in an agent, but as a function of relationship”. This dependent co-arising occurs because “of the interaction of multiple factors where cause and effect cannot be categorically isolated or traced unidirectionally”. This mutual reflexive process, this multi-directional interweaving, is how processes can feed back on themselves and result in relatively stable self-organizing patterns (p.146)

Goethe was one of the first philosophers to consider the way natural phenomena seem to manifest as organisms that have a sense of wholeness and integrity. He was interested in how we appraise or discern such wholes. He referred to them as gestalts or meaningful patterns (p.171)

Sometimes working with paradox requires discernment as to where to land on the continuum between opposites -the right shade of beige, the right compromise. But sometimes it requires explicitly grappling with that paradox and in so doing allowing new solutions and understandings to emerge; these solutions may be radical and novel and transcend what was there before (p.264)