Page 16 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Notes 1.4.1 What is Complexity Theory?

There is no one theory of complexity but rather several theories, or elements of theories, that
have emerged from natural sciences, particularly biology, computer simulation, mathematics,
physics and chemistry. These theories (for ease of reference henceforward referred to here as
complexity theory) represented a recognition of the limitations of the Newtonian, linear scientific
paradigm when applied to complex systems. The dominance of this paradigm had already been
shaken by the discoveries within quantum physics but these had been confined to a particular
scale and the implication has been the Newtonian paradigm holds for most practical purposes.
Jay Lemke describes how our analytic approach developed within the human community,
sharing knowledge across distance and time, until we became seduced by its successes into a
belief in its universal applicability In all this, we have adopted the habit of constructing the
properties of wholes from samplings of their parts. Confined to the human scale in our specific
interactions with the here-and-now, but benefitting from overlaying these with models of the
there-and then, we have had to learn to make sense of higher levels by piecing them together
‘from below’. When this same adaptive strategy was turned to the analysis of levels below us
(anatomical studies, mechanical and chemical theories) we found first that we were well-served
by our technologies (our machines, built by assembling pieces into wholes), and then that we
had to sample still lower levels, where changes happened too quickly for our eyes and where
units were many. But we still thought in terms of aggregation and piecing together, we sampled
and constructed always ‘as if from below’, our ancient phylogenetic trick, for which our symbolic
systems of communication and representation were themselves long adapted. We were, not
very surprisingly, most successful as reductionists. But in order to make the reductionist program
work it was essential that we leave ourselves out of the picture. For once we see our
representations of the levels below as actually models of our human-scale relationships to
phenomena at those levels, then the neat homogeneity of scale that defines the separability of
levels is broken.

Unlike complicated systems, where there may be many interacting elements such as, for example,
wiring in an aircraft, no amount of studying of the parts will allow us to predict what will
happen in the system as a whole. Complicated systems are determined and, with sufficient
effort, knowable. Complex systems by contrast have many interacting agents where the
interaction is unpredictable resulting in surprising outcomes. Clearly this sounds applicable to
social systems and the insights gained through complexity theory in the natural sciences have
been applied to various fields in social science on the basis of this analogy, where theory is
understood as ¯an explanatory framework that helps us understand the behaviour of a complex
social (human) system” (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003 p. 2) Complexity provides an explanatory
framework for:
how individuals and organisations interact, relate and evolve within a larger social ecosystem.
Complexity also explains why interventions may have unanticipated consequences. The intricate
interrelationships of elements within a complex system give rise to multiple chains of
dependencies. Change happens in the context of this intricate intertwining at all scales. We
become aware of change only when a different pattern becomes discernible.

—Mitleton-Kelly, 2007
Before looking at the validity of this translation from natural to social science, and its relevance
for peace and conflict studies, a brief presentation of the characteristics of complex systems is
needed to illustrate their character more clearly.

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