This is the Age of Complexity. Like other intellectual movements, the Age of Complexity is characterized by its own aesthetic. Where the Enlightenment thinkers and the Moderns - enamored of law, reason, symmetry and order - made fundamental structure the end of inquiry, the Postmoderns thought fundamental structure was just another form of dogma. Faith in the fixedness of things – truth, progress, order, and universal laws of nature – came at the expense of that which is random, ironic, and mysterious about the world. Postmodernism offered something playful, something that celebrated irony. And the Postmoderns seemed to delight in the paradoxes of language. They became the players of language games. But somewhere in the play, science got lost. Down became up and relativism reigned without rules.
Though postmodernism as a movement seemed destined to remain, there was a sense in which it could move very little earth. Once academic research had been reduced to the discovery of irony in all things, criticism became one of the only tools left to the thinker. Idle, it seemed, was the thinker acting as a creative force—a builder. Thus, on the larger questions, pragmatism at best and radicalism at worst became the only respectable positions in the humanities. Reason, ultimate truth, conceptual schemes and other false gods were vestiges of a bygone era. So what could replace them? The postmodern aesthetic, while strange and wonderful, seemed to be operating in a vacuum. And in vacuums, human beings will begin to look for points of reference, even if they have to contrive them.
Perhaps the Postmodern can appreciate one final irony: Structure as an aesthetic has returned from the ashes of Nietzsche’s pyre. But this aesthetic isn’t rooted in the foundational absolutes of the Enlightenment. Rather, it borrows a bit from both the structure and structurelessness of its predecessors.
Since we have never been able to build anything with weapons or toys (i.e. criticism or play), postmodernism has left us in a kind of smoldering academic wilderness—a scorched earth. The tools of construction and creativity have to be taken up again. We could never completely do without structure in our intellectual lives. For structure, while an aesthetic commitment, is indispensable to theory-building, to reference, and to reality. The universe doesn’t care whether we think so or not. Therefore, the synthesis between modernism and postmodernism lies between what Catherine Z. Elgin calls “the absolute and the arbitrary.” But since we are now forced to operate in areas devoid of the Enlightenment assumptions that postmodernism effectively destroyed, we must look to structure itself for answers; that is, to form and to function. But form and function offered not by what has always been human design, but by rules.
That is why I believe we are in a new age—one that is after postmodernism.
To operate in the vacuum of uncertainty, destruction, construction and reconstruction will be the both the ends and processes of inquiry. As always, we will work within our own intellectual traditions—constrained by our language, culture, limited knowledge and human nature. And if we are indeed within another aesthetic, cultural and intellectual paradigm, we must be able to recognize its indicators. That is: what do we know about the world that informs this paradigm? How can we more fully articulate its properties, its character, and even its aesthetic? How might the paradigm begin to infuse current thinking—especially in the area of politics, economics, and social science? And once our thinking is so infused, what lessons can we take with us into the world?
The Age of Complexity?
Why would anyone argue that we are in a new age and why should we care? I see three primary reasons:
First, I believe that even an intuitive understanding of complex systems will fundamentally change the way people understand society. I hope such understanding will serve as a lens or filter for people when they consider the most important questions of policy, human organization and society. But complexity theory is not just a device. There is something to it that touches on the very nature of the universe itself. For example, complexity theory deals not only with “recursion,” but is itself recursive. Indeed, a person equipped with even the basics of complexity theory will not only start to see politics differently, but will see it in everything—art, music, literature, economics, business, nature, and the human mind.
Second, complexity is a shaking free of the disciplinary strictures. The idea draws from philosophy, science, political theory, economics, aesthetics, and even psychology. It also has application in these disciplines. The sooner we realize we are in the Age of Complexity, the sooner we will be able to work creatively within some of the limits the world has always confronted us with, while simultaneously harnessing the powerful potential that lies within its fractal rules.
Finally, as we begin to see through the lens of complex systems, we will suddenly be able to pull together what we thought were disparate aspects of knowledge and the world. My hope is that this pulling together helps us make sense of so much of the world. But most of all, I hope some of the insights open new doors and generate new ideas for its practitioners. Like most people, I really want the world to be a better place. Therefore, I hope my small ripple becomes your tsunami.
