Deep Simplicity

Title: Deep Simplicity – Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life
Author: John Gribbin
Publisher: Penguin, 2005 (First published 2004)
ISBN: 978-0-14-100722-9
Pages: 251

Noted science writer, John Gribbin, is on to a little known aspect of science related to chaos theory and self-organized complexity that is the basis of life and other complex systems. The book is organized as to be helpful for the initiate, and is a good attempt to bring this new concept into the public domain. Mathematics breaks down when the systems move from simple shapes or manipulations to complex objects and repetitive interactions begin on a large scale. Future states of such systems cannot be predicted in advance, as a slight change in the initial conditions would deviate the system through a wide margin from the original. These entities are said to be on the edge of chaos and is the basis of most physical systems existing on earth. The novel concept brought home in the book is the application of this deceptively simple construct to the as yet unfathomable issue of emergence of life on this planet. Gribbin has put forward a fairly consistent argument on this issue and is a good starting point for further study.

Science broke free of the shackles of organized religion in the 17th century. Galileo’s infamous trial and incarceration is, ironically, the very last of such well-known instances. The human intellect was thus freed to explore the wide world, which it promptly did. Epochal events and discoveries were unfolded in that century, with Newton’s theory of gravitation, birth of calculus, gas laws and the first glimmers of electricity. When at last the overarching fetters of religion were finally removed, science progressed along the path of determinism, in order to deny any role for a supernatural force to dictate terms in scientific theories. Laplace crowned the deterministic faction by boldly claiming that if you know the laws of interaction between all particles and their exact initial states, you will be able to predict all the future states of the system quite faithfully. He is even claimed to have once remarked to Napoleon that he didn’t want God to turn up anywhere in his account of why the world is how it is! But as science extended its knowledge from the basics to the subtle, its limitations were soon exposed in painful detail. Even gravity was a problem when the number of interacting bodies increased. Newton’s equation is solvable even for a high school student, if we simplify the situation so as to involve only two bodies. When three objects are involved, the equations can’t be solved analytically, only approximations are possible. Consider the case of the solar system then, and we may feel butterflies in our stomach when we learn that nobody has been able to prove that the solar system is stable in the long run! However, we may take some consolation that the ‘long’ in long run is indeed long, say, a few billion years. This system is said to be chaotic, not in the literary sense, but as a very complex system that runs on simple principles, but made impossibly difficult to predict by positive feedback. Chaos means that the response for even a small change in the input might be immense, as evident in references to the ‘Butterfly Effect’, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazonian rain forest setting up a train of events that result in a tornado in Texas. But obviously, this example is highly exaggerated.

Readers are in for a surprise to know that self-organized complex systems cover everything from climate systems, astronomical objects, the biological kingdoms and even the collapse of a sand pile. Each illustration given in the book is followed by graphical representations and very informative text. The fundamental characteristic of all these systems is that they are not linear. You won’t get proportional change in output corresponding to a change in input. Here, a power law is involved, as the output is proportional to some power of the input. Hope everyone remembers their school math! The power of a number means the number multiplied that many times with itself. The secret behind eliciting a large response from a small stimulus is this power relation. Add to that the interaction among individuals. You get a complex system teetering on the edge of chaos.

Several charts and illustrative diagrams are squeezed into the text, but they lack clarity and visual appeal. Rather than instruments for better comprehension, these diagrams seem to serve the requirement of incorporating visual media in a volume of popular science. The diagrams are not anchored to the text. The readers have no clue at what point they should stop reading the text and look at the picture.  So we reach a consensus to study the chart before the page is turned over. And, though it may seem uncharitable, it must be said that, in a future edition, if all the charts are omitted by mistake, a person reading the text won’t notice it.

As a sequel to the above, it is to be noted that the book literally overflows with text that fails to carry conviction. However, to do justice to Gribbin, any book on chaos and self-organized complexity is marred by this same disadvantage. This may probably be due to the non-availability of second layer (not to be confused with second rate) writers who take inputs from first layer writers and simplify it for the lay audience. Chaos is still the preserve of pioneering writers.

Gribbin walks out of the beaten path of chaos theory to endorse evolution. He asserts the truth of the theory of evolution in unequivocal terms. Propagandists of creation and intelligent design often accuse evolution to be only a theory and not fact. Gribbin concludes that Evolution is a theory in the same sense of saying that gravity is Newton’s theory. In another context, he specifies that a hypothesis is an untested postulate and when it is supported by experiment, it graduates to the status of a theory. Evolution is a tried and tested theory in that sense.

The book also includes a defense for James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis with the rather bold conclusion that is a theory. But here, the association is doubtful. It appears as if the author’s personal familiarity with Lovelock and his ideas are dictating terms here. Gaia’s relevance to the subject under study is given only glancingly. Moreover, Gribbin is a renowned popularizer of science who is also a prolific author. Naturally, his works cover almost all areas of physics. Consequently he advises the readers through foot notes to refer to his various books, if they want to clarify a point under discussion. This self advertisement is amusing to behold.  

Rating: 3 Star

A Study of History, Vol 4

Title: A Study of History, Vol 4 – The Breakdowns of Civilizations

Author: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985 (First published 1939)

ISBN: 978-0-19-215211-4

Pages: 656

We saw how a civilization takes birth and how it grows to adulthood, in the previous volumes. We have also witnessed the problems of origin and growth the societies encounter in their multiplicity of paths and saw how Toynbee proposes a general law that applies to all known cases in the world. And we come now to analyse the problem of the breakdowns of civilizations and learn about the mechanisms that cause cracks in the body social from within. One aspect of the author’s thinking that shines through the text is his preference for an ecumenical world order that is not fettered by nation states divided on the principle of nationalism that spread like wildfire across the face of the globe in the last century. In fact, nothing irritates him more than the appeal to patriotism to a parochial state. He identifies papacy with the personification of a spiritual order that embraces all humanity. Some readers are justified in suspecting this to be the author’s weak point. This volume also includes a concise, yet illuminating monograph on the caste system in India which turned into hyper-religiosity that is the hallmark of Indian society even today. Even though the author has not delved deep into the unique social feature of caste in India, what is given is a nice preface for other scholars to build on. Toynbee is an admirer of science and an enthusiast in applying its findings to history too. Evolution is his favourite area of interest and imports its concepts freely to demonstrate as proof to his own arguments in a historical milieu. Though his researches go deep into five millennia of history, the failure to anticipate a world war looming on the horizon in 1938 when the book was in publication is indeed a drawback. Mussolini and Hitler are criticized regularly in the text, but the quicksand in which contemporary Europe was mired in, does not find articulation in any convincing detail.

As the title implies our investigation enters the next phase in the life of civilizations – its breakdown. As is usual with the author, he starts by negating some of the usual reasons attributed to the breakdown of a soceity. This is not the result of a loss of command over the enviornment. These are instances in which the society that has superior means of interaction with the physical world was actually in decay. Apart from the physical, the human enviornment, in the form of aggression from outside the realm of the society plays a significant factor in bringing to a close the life of a stricken society. Rome met its end in the rise of barbarians who invaded from outside its frontiers, while the Christian Church corroded its foundation from the inside. But Toynbee establishes that this apparent victory of barbarism and religion was not the factor that contributed to Roman society’s demise, which was in breakdown right from the time of Hannibal’s invasion a few centuries ago. In other cases, a civilization is eclipsed by an alien society imposing its cultural implements on the vanquished, thereby making them subject to the external stimulus. Egyptiac society was likewise wiped off the face of the Earth by Syriac society and Orthodox Christendom was annexed by Osmanlis. But in both these cases, the external aggeression provided only the coup de grace on a stricken society that had committed great self-mortification akin to suicide much time ago. In most of the instances, internecine warfare has been the mechanism of breakdown.

Three of the clear roads to disintegration are the creative minority losing its creative streak and going on to idolize the self, institutions or techniques. By this worship of the created as against the creator, the society loses steam on its track to growth and attempts geographical expansion. One clear example is the Eastern Roman Empire and its modus operandi to disaster at the hands of Ottoman Turks. When a time of troubles began at the breakdown of Roman Civilization, the creative minority had lost the talent to offer a successful response to the challenge. So they idolized and glorified the Roman Empire which had just collapsed in Italy. Adoration of this lost cause ended up in establishing that ghost of Roman Empire as the East Roman Empire in Constantinople. However, being a patchwork of irreconcilable divergences, break down began soon after, when internecine warfare with Bulgaria exhausted its resources. The Empire was provided with its coup de grace by Saljuq Turks at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The author identifies another social law here. When a state is conjectured out of enmity towards an alien one, such as the East Roman one was made into being to stop the outward spread of Abbasid Caliphate, the state will crumble when the alien one which was its purport to hinder, was also in decline. When the Abbasids declined, the East Romans also disintegrated. And this is valid in other civiliztions too.

It is natural to expect a British historian to sing the praise of British Raj that was running full throttle when he was writing those lines. Toynbee gets one step ahead and claims that the future would hold the Raj, a golden moment in India’s political history by providing it with a modern and viable universal state. But he takes great pains to acquit his compatriots from the charge of overthrowing the Hindu Civilization. The British eliminated the anarchy that came in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire, and the Mughals were as alien to the Indians as British were. The disintegration of Indian society is argued to have occurred far earlier, just before the first wave of Turkish invasions heated up the north western frontier nearing the end of 12^th century. The author does not put forward a conclusive reason for the breakdown, but his wild guess of the cause being the abduction of the daughter of Raja Jaichand by Prithviraj Chauhan that led to fratricidal warfare can’t be taken seriously.

A fine description of the strange effects the modern institutions of industrialism and democracy is given. These had lasting effects whenever they touched social lives. Slavery was abolished when democracy crossed swords with it. Making another human being a slave ran counter to the nations of liberal thought in contemporary England and anti-slavery measures gradually spread round the world. Industrialism didn’t produce such a salutary effect when it embraced nation states in the 19^th century. Men fought their best (or worst) when they fought for the cause of religion. But Episcopal schism in churches succeeding the Renaissance generated a sense of disillusionment. So the, 18^th century war between states had become a sport of kings. They played for provinces, concessions and other limited objectives with minimal losses in money and men. But industrialism placed deadly weapons in the hands of new states formed under the zeal of democracy. The democratic states fought bitterly and at great expense with each other. Thus, the modern ideas of industrialism and democracy produced bitter results of war when enmeshed with the older institution of parochial state sovereignty. Toynbee correctly identifies the arena of industrialism as the whole world without artificial trade barriers, but falls short of envisaging globalization. His idea of international trade was the liberal regulations that will be imposed by a powerful state that conquered its brothers to assume world hegemony.

The most inscrutable fact of Toynbee’s argument is his preoccupation with the glorification of papacy. He even calls it ‘the greatest of western society’s institutions’. The most important factor in his adoration of the Roman high priest’s claim to ecclesiastical sovereignty over the whole of Western Christendom is his equally sharp disfavor against the division of society into parochial nation states. Nationalism and its byproduct of narrow patriotism find intense criticism at every turn of the book’s pages. In this arrangement, the author might have liked the effects of papacy as a lesser evil, in which the religious attraction is trans-national. We should note one clear aspect in this context. Toynbee’s infatuation with papacy is not at all linked to recognition of any moral or spiritual fountain emanating from the institution in Rome or in the person of the Pope. In fact, this volume contains numerous instances of the nefarious ways of popes in which they were involved in instances of simony, political machinations, conspiracies, adultery and wanton cruelty. Toynbee even thinks about a crisis that may soon engulf the Western society that might spell doom for the parochial, democratic nation states and dreams about a return of the papal control as a way out of the bottleneck. However, his observation falls short of the then state of society to which he belonged.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star