Sorin Solomon
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lagrange Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Excellence in Complexity, ISI Torino
Complexity is not "a" science. It is the shape which sciences assume after self-organizing along their natural internal connections that cut across the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Its objects of study are adaptive collective entities emerging in one discipline (at a coarse space-time scale) as the result of simpler interactions of elementary components belonging to another discipline (at a finer scale).
But complexity is not offering just a way of answering questions from one science using concepts from another: it is promoting a new (agent/network-based) language which allows the formulation of novel questions. This includes a new grammar which allows novel interrogative forms. As such, it requires the growth of a new generation of scientists mastering this interdisciplinary universal grammar.
Thus complexity is not a juxtaposition of various expertises. It is rather an intimate fusion of knowledge, a coordinated shift in the very objectives, scope and ethos of the affected disciplines. Consequently, it encounters fierce resistance from distinguished scientists that see themselves bona-fide defending the old identity of their disciplines. To avoid conflict, complexity should be given its own space and support rather than expecting that complexity projects will be supported by the departments whose very identity they are challenging.
Complexity induces a new relation between theoretical / "academic" and applied science. Rather than applying new hardware devices to physical reality, complexity applies new (self-)organization concepts and (self-)adaptation emergence theories to social and economic changes, to individual and collective creativity, to the information flow that sustains life etc. Thus, much of the applications of Complexity are of a new brand: "Theoretical Applied Science" and should be recognized as such.
