The Edge recently had an issue on predictability. You can predict why! From the financial collapse of 2008, to the earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes which have devastated so many parts of the world in the last three years, certainty seems increasingly misguided. The first main article in the piece is from Bruce Parker, an oceanographer. He starts with this –
Prediction is the very essence of science. We judge the correctness a scientifictheory by its ability to predict specific events. And from a more real-world practical point of view, the primary purpose of science itself is to achieve a prediction capability which will give us some control over our lives and some protection from the environment around us.
Oh, that bothered me. It’s bothered me since I first read it, and it’s continued to bother me since. You see, I like science. I love those scientific stories of exploration and discovery. But I don’t like the kind of science described in this opening paragraph. “Prediction is the very essence of science”….really? I know what he means, but isn’t there a lot more to science than prediction? I went back to Richard Holmes, “Age of Wonder“. No, it’s not a tale of prediction, it’s a tale of wonder and discovery. And what about this aim of science – “give us some control over our lives and some protection from the environment around us”. Again, I understand why he says this, but isn’t this too narrow a view of science? Doesn’t complexity science itself show how unlikely it is that we’ll be able to predict and control ourselves or the natural environment of which we are a part (not “apart from”)?
So, it was with great interest that I read and article from the biologist, Brian Goodwin, entitled “Towards a Science of Qualities….”
Reductionist science is essentially a strategy of divide and conquer: dividing the world into constituent systems whose parts are simple enough to allow prediction of their behaviour, and hence to exert control over their activity. This has worked remarkably well in many physical systems and even, to some extent, in biology. The approach exemplifies the principle that can be described metaphorically as linear thinking, which regards a whole as no more than the sum of its parts. Manipulation of the parts then results in control over the whole.
He goes on in the article to describe characteristics of complex systems and to argue (convincingly in my opinion) that we cannot hope to predict and control such systems. What we need to focus in instead is to further our understanding of complex systems and to learn how to increase things like “fitness” and “resilience”.
I think that’s the right approach. There’s too much “command and control” in our world – and it’s flawed. Let’s restore a sense of wonder, a desire to discover and understand, and to develop a good, scientific understanding of how to adapt, how to be flexible and how to increase our resilience and our creativity.
Heroes Not Zombies 