Energy, energy flows, energy stores, cycles, and Complex Systems

1. Energy, energy flows, energy stores, cycles, and Complex Systems

2. Categories of entities (from The Reductionist blind spot)

3. What’s the relationship between the act of flipping a light switch and the light going on? • Flipping the switch enables electricity to flow, which produces light as it moves through the bulb. • More generally, flipping the switch changes the environment which channels the energy of the electric current so that it will produce light. • This is a very simple example of an action that produces an effect indirectly. • It’s actually a bit too simple and I will back off from this position later.

4. This sort of indirection—change the environment so that existing forces will produce desired results—is characteristic of complex systems. • One version of this is called stigmergy: social insects communicate with each other—thereby affecting the behavior of other insects and channeling their energy—by leaving “messages” in the environment, e.g., the ant foraging example. • This is distinguished from traditional systems in which one imagines a central energy source producing results by direct action or through chains of direct actions—e.g., a water wheel.

5. I would suggest that as a top-level analysis actions should be categorized as either • changing the environment—so that something desired will happen when energy that is not under one’s direct control is applied in the context of the changed environment • applying energy directly to achieve a result. • So the light switch is a bad example because it is a case of releasing stored energy which is under our direct control. • Releasing stored energy is much more like applying energy directly to achieve a result than it is like shaping the environment. • The 911 terrorists “captured” energy and then released it directly.

6. Stored energy • There would be no complexity were it not possible to store energy. If energy couldn’t be stored it would dissipate immediately. Energy dissipation may produce complex patterns (Prigogene’s dissipative structures) but it’s hard to see how these patterns can be built up to multiple levels. • The GoL Turing Machine looks like a counter example, but it isn’t because computational processes are energy subsidized. There are no energy considerations when discussing software functionality. It’s not that the computer doesn’t use energy; it’s that in using energy the computer gives software—of any complexity—a free ride. • One (intuitive) characteristic of living organisms is that they are animated, which implies the ability to store and then release that stored energy in a controlled way.

7. Basic message • Complex systems wouldn’t exist were it not for energy supplied to them from external sources. • Complex systems maintain global constraints by implementing attractor limit cycles. It requires energy simply to loop through a cycle—not to mention the energy required to return a system to its attractor cycle. • Energy, energy flows, and energy storage are fundamental. • As are cycles and the energy frameworks needed to retain them. • To understand a system one should expose the cycles and “follow the energy” (as we say “follow the money”), i.e., trace energy flows back to their sources. • Manipulating (or just affecting) energy stores or flows provides major levers for influencing complex systems. Can do it • directly—by capturing and releasing them • Typical of biological organisms, force-against-force warfare, 911 terrorists. • indirectly by shaping the environment in which they occur • Typical of complex systems—snake farm example.