Society is complicated. But this book argues that this does not place it
beyond the reach of a science that can help to explain and perhaps even
to predict social behaviour. As a system made up of many interacting
agents - people, groups, institutions and governments, as well as
physical and technological structures such as roads and computer
networks - society can be regarded as a complex system. In recent years,
scientists have made great progress in understanding how such complex
systems operate, ranging from animal populations to earthquakes and
weather. These systems show behaviours that cannot be predicted or
intuited by focusing on the individual components, but which emerge
spontaneously as a consequence of their interactions: they are said to
be 'self-organized'. Attempts to direct or manage such emergent
properties generally reveal that 'top-down' approaches, which try to
dictate a particular outcome, are ineffectual, and that what is needed
instead is a 'bottom-up' approach that aims to guide self-organization
towards desirable states.
This book shows how some of these ideas from the science of complexity
can be applied to the study and management of social phenomena,
including traffic flow, economic markets, opinion formation and the
growth and structure of cities. Building on these successes, the book
argues that the complex-systems view of the social sciences has now
matured sufficiently for it to be possible, desirable and perhaps
essential to attempt a grander objective: to integrate these efforts
into a unified scheme for studying, understanding and ultimately
predicting what happens in the world we have made. Such a scheme would
require the mobilization and collaboration of many different research
communities, and would allow society and its interactions with the
physical environment to be explored through realistic models and
large-scale data collection and analysis. It should enable us to find
new and effective solutions to major global problems such as conflict,
disease, financial instability, environmental despoliation and poverty,
while avoiding unintended policy consequences. It could give us the
foresight to anticipate and ameliorate crises, and to begin tackling
some of the most intractable problems of the twenty-first century.
