Thus spake russell standish circa 09-09-21 05:20 PM: > I would say the two terms in essence mean the same thing. I would say > a "complex system" is one that exhibits "emergence". > > BTW, I technically use the term complexity to refer to a measure - it > is a numerical quantity, usually closely related to information. But I > do recognise that it could be used to describe a quality - ie that which > makes a complex system complex. If the first sentence is true, then > complexity would be the quality of exhibiting emergence :).
I could live with the idea that emergence is a measure of complexity (which is what I infer from "a complex system exhibits emergence"). I don't treat complexity, in itself, as a measure, though. Complexity is a property (scaled at least from simple to complex). And there are measures that attempt to estimate the complexity of a system. It's important the measures of complexity need not be _metrics_; but they can be. So the co-domain of a measure of complexity can be qualitative, hyperspatial, discrete, continuous, whatever. > I think the difference between our approaches is you would prefer to > give up emergence to the the obfuscating mysterians, and invent a new > term "complexity" for the concept, or similarly related, Well, almost, except I've seen a lot more work on measures of complexity than I have measures of emergence. So, there's at least some footing there. And I believe my defn (and yours) could leverage that work to some extent, except I don't see the need for "emergence" as a term when we have complexity and measures of complexity. If emergence were just a (particular type of) measure of complexity, then even if it's weren't as useless as I find it, it's usefulness would be minimal and specific, which would actually make me happy. 8^) -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
