Understanding Complexity

Citation

Hutton, D.M. (2002), "Understanding Complexity", Kybernetes, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.2002.06731aae.006

Understanding Complexity

Understanding Complexity

Gillian Ragsdell and Jennifer Wilby (Editors)Kluwer Academic/Plenum PublishersNew York London. Dordrecht, Boston and Moscowxiii + 292 ppISBN 0-306-46586-8$75/£52.50/Euro 86.25 (Hardcover)

This is a special commemorative volume of a unique millennium-year event-a World Congress of Systems Sciences which was held in conjunction with the 44th annual meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS). It had the all-embracing theme of 'Understanding Complexity in the New Millennium'.

In the systems and cybernetics communities it was described as a landmark event and it was indeed very well supported at its Canadian venue, Ryerston Polytechnic University in Toronto.

It was held from July 16–22, 2000 and some 350 participants from over 30 countries attended. Some 21 organisations and groups co-hosted the event each one was responsible for presenting part of the programme, including a plenary speech.

With so many participants the editors had the almost impossible task of choosing the contributions to be published. A book many times the size of this volume could well have resulted. It is a distillation of the plenary sessions – the ISSS president, Peter Corning writes in his preface, anything else would have changed it from a readable text into a reference volume.

It has the feel of a book that can be read section by section, which is certainly in contrast to the collection of conference papers – often only summaries or abstracts that are so often passed off as the full proceeding of some congress. The editors are to be congratulated on bringing together an important selection of academic papers that reflect the thinking of the year 2000, but whether it will have an influential role in the 21st century as the editors suggest, is not so certain. The published papers we are informed have emerged from keynote addresses, presidential speeches and plenary sessions. Unlike so many published collections of academic papers delivered at a conference they were edited after the event and could therefore reflect what actually took place and perhaps measure the reception which participants gave to the individual presentations. If this volume provides a true summary of the academic content of the conference then the reader will wonder at its wide-ranging scope and marvel at the way in which some contributors were able to interpret its theme. One has the feeling that no issue was left out.

The text was structured into eight sections each with its own subtheme. It is worth examining the groupings of the papers which, the editors write are aligned as closely as possible with the main conference themes. The sections are: Theories for Complex Systems; Emerging Foci on Systems Research and Practice; Human Systems in the 21st Century: The Challenge of Sustainability; The Art and Science of Forecasting in the age of Global Warming; Y2K; The Future of Systems Science; and finally-ISSS Presidential Addresses. Taking even the most generous view of some of the chosen themes it was difficult to see how some papers had any relevance to them. Even so, it is not the book reviewers task to critise what was already been described in this journal as a most successful and highly regarded event.

This reviewer, like most potential readers of this volume, did not attend the conference and in consequence is only entitled to discuss this volume. Whereas conference attendees will undoubtedly wish to have a copy of what is described as a "Commemorative Volume of the World congress for Systems Sciences and ISSS" others may not be so inclined.

On the other hand some of the papers are quite excellent and anyone with interests in systems and cybernetics should forget the contrived themes and sub-themes and concentrate on them. Many of the authors are very well known in these fields and many of their contributions take on an original form and not the often expected repetitions of past researches and out-dated ideas.

D.M. Hutton