Overcomplicated by Samuel Arbesman

Overcomplicated by Samuel Arbesman

Author:Samuel Arbesman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-06-21T14:10:09+00:00


When Physics and Biology Meet

The biological aspects of technology—its klugeyness, its growth and change due to evolutionary tinkering, its many miscellaneous details—are extensive. But does this mean that we should abandon our search for underlying regularities in all this complexity? Absolutely not. Physics thinking still has a role in how we approach technology.

When attempting to understand a complex system, we must determine the proper resolution, or level of detail, at which to look at it. How fine-grained a level of detail are we focusing on? Do we focus on the individual enzyme molecules in a cell of a large organism, or do we focus on the organs and blood vessels? Do we focus on the binary signals winging their way through circuitry, or do we examine the overall shape and function of a computer program? At a larger scale, do we look at the general properties of a computer network, and ignore the individual machines and decisions that make up this structure?

These are not always easy questions to answer. Sometimes we must tend toward physics thinking, abstracting away the details to understand the system as a whole. And sometimes the details are important, as with our hapax legomena and edge cases: then we must rely on more biological thinking.

But all too often, the different levels of resolution collide. Sickle-cell anemia, a quite serious systemic disease, is caused by a tiny change in a single base pair in our DNA. A large fraction of the United States electrical grid can be brought down by a cascade set off by trees touching power lines in Ohio, as happened in the summer of 2003. When systems become more and more interconnected, not only do resolution levels intersect, but domains thought to be separated are increasingly brought together. More and more we need to combine both the physics and the biological ways of thinking, looking at the order while not ignoring the rough edges. A biological mind-set partnered with a physics mind-set allows us to feel more comfortable with the kluges around us. In Neal Stephenson’s novel Cryptonomicon, one of the characters elaborates on the structure of the pantheon of Greek gods, making exactly this point:



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