ilya_prigogine_isabelle_stengers_alvin_tofflerbookfi-org

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tion, be it of animals, activities, or habits. What is presupposed
is that each member of a given population can be taken
as the equivalent of any of the others. But this general equivalence
can itself be seen not as a simple general fact but as an
approximation, the validity of which depends on the constraints
and pressures to which this population was submitted
and on the strategy it used to cope with them.
Take, for example, the distinction ecologists have proposed
between K and r strategies. K and r refer to the parameters in
logistic equations. Though this distinction is only relative, it is
especially clear when it characterizes the divergence resulting
from a systematic interaction between two populations, particularly
the prey-predator interaction. In this view, the typical
evolution for a prey population will be the increase in the reproduction
rate r. The predator will evolve toward more effective
ways of capturing its prey-that is, toward an amelioration
of K. But this amelioration, defined in a logistic frame, is liable
to have consequences that go beyond the situations defined by
logistic equations.
As Stephen 1. Gould remarked, 16 a K strategy implies individuals
becoming more and more able to learn from experience
and to store memories-that is, individuals more
complex with a longer period of maturation and apprenticeship.
This in turn means individuals both more "valuable"­
representing a larger biological investment-and characterized
by a longer period of vulnerability. The development of
"social" and "family" ties thus appears as a logical counterpart
of the K strategy. From that point on, other factors, besides
the mere number of individuals in the population,
become more and more relevant and the logistic equation measuring
the success by the number of individuals becomes misleading.
We have here a particular example of what makes
modelization so risky. In complex systems, both the definition
of entities and of the interactions among them can be modified
by evolution. Not only each state of a system but also the very
definition of the system as modelized is generally unstable, or
at least metastable.
We come to problems where methodology cannot be separated
from the question of the nature of the object investigated.
We cannot ask the same questions about a population of
flies that reproduce and die by millions without apparently