At Home in The Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity

by Stuart Kauffman
Oxford University Press,
New York, U.S.A. 1995.
321pp. $25.00
ISBN 0-19-509599-5

Reviewed by Roger F Malina


Recently I reviewed, very favorably, John Holland's book "Hidden Order" that described current work in the science of complexity and artificial life. So it was with some anticipation that I started reading Stuart Kauffman's "At Home in the Universe". Kauffman is a prominent researcher in the science of complexity and also a fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. His topic is the emergence of life within the broader interdisciplinary context of complex adaptive systems of all kinds. Where I found Holland's book clear, focused and compelling- I found Kauffman's book to be somewhat confused, frustrating, evangelical but in the end- very thought provoking. The last two chapters by themselves rescued the book. And it is a delight to read about current research and its larger meaning from the researcher himself, rather than by a science popularizer.

The last two chapters are titled "In Search of Excellence" and "An Emerging Global Civilization". These chapters present tantalizing speculations about how our growing understanding of the evolution of complex adaptive systems in biology may shed light on, and even lay rigorous theoretical foundations, for studying the behavior of human organizations ( corporations, cities..) and maybe on the development of culture and civilization itself. A central tenet of the "Santa Fe School" view of the science of complexity is the importance, and necessity, of finding discipline independent theoretical descriptions of complex adaptive systems. Kauffman's speculations even provide hints of bases for political theory ( eg what is the optimal size of a human organization to allow it to adapt to a rapidly changing environment).

The heart of Kauffman's argument is that the processes of self-organization and the spontaneous development of ordered structures are far more important than we supposed. He calls this "order for free" and argues that the theory of biological evolution needs to be fundamentally modified to account for this. He argues that although our Darwinian concept of evolution driven by natural selection is still the right framework, that the spontaneous generation of complex structures is an equally important shaper of evolution. he develops in detail the ideas that complex ordered structures are highly favored when a system is located "at the edge of chaos"- and that under certain conditions systems naturally evolve to this edge of chaos where complex structures are highly favored. Life- highly evolved complex adaptive systems- can be viewed as naturally emergent - and that in this sense we are "at home in the universe". Life is not a result of accident and chance, but rather a natural property of the universe (modified by the process of natural selection).

One of the ideas developed at length is the concept of an "optimal patch" that allows a complex system to adapt successfully to a landscape of constraints and pressures Structures that are too small may not be able to migrate to the best solution, structures that are too large may get trapped in the landscape.

Thus (p247) "flatter, decentralized organizations may function well- and that contrary to intuition breaking an organization into "patches" where each patch attempts to optimize for it's own selfish benefit , even if that is harmful to the whole, can lead, as if by an invisible hand to the welfare of the whole organization. " In a system where the patches are too large ( "the Stalinist regime") the structure may optimize on a local optimum but be frozen from finding better solutions, but that if the patches are too small ( the leftist Italian limit ) the system never settles down to a good state.

Another idea is how if the patches are in continuos communication with each other, this may also prevent optimal solutions from being reached. Some modeling has shown that the best strategy is (p 269) "In conflict laden problems the best solutions may be found if, in some way, different subsets of constants are ignored at different moments. You should not try to please all of the people all of the time, but should pay attention to everyone some of the time". Maybe the Internet- by driving too high a level of communication between human cultures could stifle the emergence of creative ideas!!

In the closing pages of the book Kauffman puts a damper on some of the speculation, and the danger of taking too literally research in complex adaptive systems and applying it globally (where does science become the handmaid of ideology!). Quoting Scott Momadays' work he argues that we must "re-invent the sacred in the modern world" and that " all we can do is seek to be locally wise".