Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

complex adaptive system. In fact, as Gell-Mann observes, the most fascinating increases incomplexity are those that involve a transition from a level of organization to a higher one,typically through the formation of a composite structure.Ecological communities made up of many complex individuals, belonging to a largenumber of species, are not likely to reach or even closely approach an ultimate steady state.Each species evolves in the presence of constantly changing congeries of other species. Suchchanges offer niches organisms can fill in. In both economics and ecology, the advent of anew business or a new organism (or of a new type of behavior) will alter the “fitnesslandscape” for the other members of the community. Fitness is a biological concept whichdescribes the relative success of a species in relation to other in its environment and can beseen as a measure of how well an agent is adapted to its niche in the landscape. Competitioncan be said to occur on a fitness landscape. That landscape is not fixed but changes inresponse to the effects of the actions of all other actors. Indeed, always exploring, seekingout opportunities, experimenting with novelty, the complex adaptive system tries outincreases in complexity and occasionally discovers solutions that open up the possibility ofwhole new structures, including new kinds of complex adaptive systems. This is emergentorder through self-organization.This process does not always proceed at a more or less uniform rate. In stead itoften exhibits the phenomenon of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in which species stay relativelyunchanged for long periods of time and the undergo comparatively rapid change over a briefperiod 72 . This can be caused by sudden changes (relative to the “normal” rate of speciesadaptive capabilities) in the environment. Just as the addition of a single grain of sand to alarge sand pile can trigger avalanches down its side, so can a change in the fitness of onespecies cause a sudden change in the fitness of all the other species in the ecosystem, whichcan culminate in an avalanche of extinction 73 . Alternatively it can be due to the accumulationof fairly small genetic changes which can radically alter the phenotype. Such changes caninitiate a series of linked events, in which some organisms become more successful, othersdie out, the whole community is altered, and new ecological niches open up 74 . Such upheavalcan then provoke changes in neighboring communities. Systems can feature such a selforganizedcriticality 75 . Kauffman noted that ‘the edge of chaos also corresponds to a poisedself-organized critical state with respect to co-evolutionary avalanches’ 76 . Furthermore henotes that:networks on the boundary between order and chaos may have the flexibility to adapt rapidlyand successfully through the accumulation of useful variations. In such poised systems,mutations have small consequences because of the systems’ homeostatic nature. A fewmutations, however, cause larger cascades of change. Poised systems will typically adapt to achanging environment gradually, but if necessary, they can occasionally change rapidly’ 77 .Elsewhere he notes that72 Capra (1996), p.226.73 Horgan, p.134.74 Gell-Mann, pp.239, 257.75 This concept was developed by Per Bak and Kan Chen in ‘Self-Organized Criticality’, ScientificAmerican, January 1991, pp.46-53.76 Kauffman (1993), p.263. See further Waldrop, pp.307-18 for a historical and journalistic account ofKauffman's investigations.77 Stuart Kauffman, ‘Antichaos and Adaptation’, Scientific American, August 1991, cited in Capra (1996),p.205.141