I can only give a very partial answer, focusing on the negative side. I hope someone more informed on the positive side can add their perspective.
“Complex systems” has always seemed to me to be a non-apple, and many of the words used around it, like “emergence”, are synonyms for “magic”. Real things are done under the umbrella of the term, but I see no coherence in the area that the umbrella covers. It is, however, a fertile field for generating popsci books.
BTW, “complexity theory” is also the name of a branch of mathematics that studies what resources (usually time and space) are required to solve computational problems, like sorting a list, or finding a 4-colouring of a given map. This complexity theory has nothing to do with the “complexity science” you are asking about. I mention it only to avoid a possible confusion.
Similar here. Reading the title, thinking “explaining how exponential complexity is worse than linear will be a piece of cake”. Reading the text, thinking “okay, how is this different from cybernetics?”
Even Wikipedia just says “study of complexity and complex systems”, and then points towards computational complexity and systems theory. Wikipedia has its flaws, but...
Even among the resources linked as “some courses/primers/introductions”, half of them do not contain words “complexity theory” or “complexity science”. Which makes me doubt:
It is at least not 100% crackpottery, since some books are published by Princeton university press and Oxford university press.
Just because those books contain the word “complex” or “complexity”, doesn’t mean they support the idea of “complexity science”.
Complexity theory seems to be a rarely used synonym for complexity science. Although, it’s used in the title of one of the books. I’ve mistakenly used “complexity theory” too many times in my question. I’ve just fixed that.
Regarding some courses/primers/introductions, I found them by following links and citations from other complexity science related things and by using connectedpapers.com to find similar books/articles, not just by googling complexity science. (Except for the classcentral courses, but those talk about dynamic systems, chaos, and fractals, so they are probably also on-topic) So they most probably support the idea of complexity science. You can also Ctrl+F “emerg” to find the use of the word emergence in them and see that they talk about complexity science.
To be clear, I’ve checked Understanding complexity by Scott E. Page—the book contains lectures and is published by Princeton university press and Complexity: a guided tour—Mitchell 2011 published by Oxford university press and they definitely talk about emergence, self-organization and contain other vocab associated with complexity science.
Suppose Xs are some small parts of a big thing and Y happens in the big thing due to how Xs work and how they interact together. I think people say “Y is an emergent outcome of Xs doing whatever it is that they do” means “Y is an outcome of Xs doing whatever it is that they do and for human it would be difficult to figure out that Y would happen if they just looked at Xs separately”.
The problematic part is when you turn the concept of “despite understanding the rules of all little pieces, it is still difficult for a human to predict some patterns of their interaction” into a noun, and then kinda suggest that it refers to a mysterious thing that many difficult-to-predict patterns have in common, and that there is a way to study this mysterious thing itself, and by doing so gain insight (going beyond “yep, complex things with many parts are often difficult to predict”) into all these difficult-to-predict patterns.
In other words, if you make it seem as if understanding of e.g. gliders and biological evolution (two examples of “emergence”) allows you to better predict stock markets (another example of “emergence”… therefore, they all should have something in common, and you can study that).
Taken literally, that description fits every phenomenon in our universe above the level of individual quarks [...] There’s nothing wrong with saying “X emerges from Y,” where Y is some specific, detailed model with internal moving parts. [...] Gravity arises from the curvature of spacetime, according to the specific mathematical model of General Relativity. Chemistry arises from interactions between atoms, according to the specific model of quantum electrodynamics.
The phrase “emerges from” is acceptable, just like “arises from” or “is caused by” are acceptable, if the phrase precedes some specific model to be judged on its own merits. However, this is not the way “emergence” is commonly used. “Emergence” is commonly used as an explanation in its own right.
I can only give a very partial answer, focusing on the negative side. I hope someone more informed on the positive side can add their perspective.
“Complex systems” has always seemed to me to be a non-apple, and many of the words used around it, like “emergence”, are synonyms for “magic”. Real things are done under the umbrella of the term, but I see no coherence in the area that the umbrella covers. It is, however, a fertile field for generating popsci books.
BTW, “complexity theory” is also the name of a branch of mathematics that studies what resources (usually time and space) are required to solve computational problems, like sorting a list, or finding a 4-colouring of a given map. This complexity theory has nothing to do with the “complexity science” you are asking about. I mention it only to avoid a possible confusion.
Similar here. Reading the title, thinking “explaining how exponential complexity is worse than linear will be a piece of cake”. Reading the text, thinking “okay, how is this different from cybernetics?”
Even Wikipedia just says “study of complexity and complex systems”, and then points towards computational complexity and systems theory. Wikipedia has its flaws, but...
Even among the resources linked as “some courses/primers/introductions”, half of them do not contain words “complexity theory” or “complexity science”. Which makes me doubt:
Just because those books contain the word “complex” or “complexity”, doesn’t mean they support the idea of “complexity science”.
Complexity theory seems to be a rarely used synonym for complexity science. Although, it’s used in the title of one of the books. I’ve mistakenly used “complexity theory” too many times in my question. I’ve just fixed that.
Regarding some courses/primers/introductions, I found them by following links and citations from other complexity science related things and by using connectedpapers.com to find similar books/articles, not just by googling complexity science. (Except for the classcentral courses, but those talk about dynamic systems, chaos, and fractals, so they are probably also on-topic) So they most probably support the idea of complexity science. You can also Ctrl+F “emerg” to find the use of the word emergence in them and see that they talk about complexity science.
To be clear, I’ve checked Understanding complexity by Scott E. Page—the book contains lectures and is published by Princeton university press and Complexity: a guided tour—Mitchell 2011 published by Oxford university press and they definitely talk about emergence, self-organization and contain other vocab associated with complexity science.
Suppose Xs are some small parts of a big thing and Y happens in the big thing due to how Xs work and how they interact together. I think people say “Y is an emergent outcome of Xs doing whatever it is that they do” means “Y is an outcome of Xs doing whatever it is that they do and for human it would be difficult to figure out that Y would happen if they just looked at Xs separately”.
Yes, this is a motte of “emergence”.
The problematic part is when you turn the concept of “despite understanding the rules of all little pieces, it is still difficult for a human to predict some patterns of their interaction” into a noun, and then kinda suggest that it refers to a mysterious thing that many difficult-to-predict patterns have in common, and that there is a way to study this mysterious thing itself, and by doing so gain insight (going beyond “yep, complex things with many parts are often difficult to predict”) into all these difficult-to-predict patterns.
In other words, if you make it seem as if understanding of e.g. gliders and biological evolution (two examples of “emergence”) allows you to better predict stock markets (another example of “emergence”… therefore, they all should have something in common, and you can study that).
Quoting Eliezer: (source)