Perplexing complexity human modelling and primacy of the group as essence of complexity

Abstract

AbstractThis paper describes the emergence of complexity as duplicated evolutionary process. The first procedural source of complexity is the quantum jump of the evolution of the human species when it started to maintain certain brain-internal models of its environment. The second—parallel—procedural origin is the evolution of a communication structure, a language, with which an already existing group of primates could frame their internal models. In contrast to definitions of complexity which use the concept in the context of theoretical physics, this approach reveals some perplexing properties of model building for a special subject of investigation, namely the human species. All adequate models of political economy (economics is just the sub-discipline that freezes political dynamics) have to be complex. Since today’s mainstream economic theory lends its formal apparatus from the mathematics of Newtonian physics, it misses the most essential features characterizing human social dynamics, i.e. its complexity. On the other hand, a formal definition of complexity by mathematicians, e.g. the one provided by Princeton Companion to Mathematics, sometimes falls short of the inspirations gained by closely observing biological systems. What is needed thus is transdisciplinary research. The first part of the paper takes Erwin Schrödinger’s book ‘What is Life?’ as a starting point for this issue. In this part, several—sometimes highly speculative—suggestions on how to proceed are presented. The following second part then identifies two central obstacles that turn out to be overcome: First, scientific research in this field always has to come up with a synthesis that states what is essential. A wealth of singular islands of knowledge isolated in their domains is unsatisfactory. Second, the modelling of political economy dynamics as a complex system has to be rooted in an understanding of how living systems in their deepest structure work. The daring hypothesis put forward is that such an understanding can be enabled by letting quantum theoretic reasoning revolutionize the formal language of the social sciences.