Key concepts of complexity science, such as nonlinearity, emergence and self-organization all follow from the old adage that the whole is greater than (or different from) the sum of the parts [1]. The fact that we use the word ‘parts’ (and like words such as components, elements, and even ‘agents’) implies that nature may be broken into separate pieces, basic ‘building blocks’ that somehow are brought together to produce coordinated behavior. Yet we know that even in the simplest complex system of just two components interacting nonlinearly, this is a complicated business. Inspired originally by physical theories of self-organization in open, nonequilibrium systems [2] the science of coordination (Coordination Dynamics) seeks to understand how coordinated patterns of behavior form and change at many scales and for multiple functions in living things [3]. In Coordination Dynamics a “part” is actually a softly assembled collective called a synergy. The synergy is a minimally complex system: perturbing it in one place often has remote effects somewhere else, in such a way as to preserve function. A conceptual and practical benefit of the synergy is that it can be defined in terms of collective variables and their dynamics. As I will show in this talk, using both experiment and theory, the basic coordination dynamics accommodates synergies of just a few elements and synergies composed of many (heterogeneous) elements [4] A dominant feature of the dynamics is metastability in which, strictly speaking, there are no coordinated states, only opposing tendencies, e.g. segregation ~ integration, competition ~ cooperation, individual ~ collective etc. Such complementary pairs fall directly out of the coordination dynamics [5]. Finally, new work--still preliminary [6]--suggests that synergies become functional when the organism (here a human baby) realizes it is an agent and can make things happen in the world [7]. Initially spontaneous self-organized coordination thus becomes directed.
Acknowledgements
Work supported by NIMH Grant MH080838 and FAU Foundation
References
[1] P.W. Anderson, Science, 177 (1972) 393.
[2] H. Haken, Synergetics, an introduction: Non-equilibrium phase transitions and self-organization in physics, chemistry and biology. Berlin: Springer, 1977.
[3] J.A.S. Kelso, In R.A. Meyers (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science, Springer: Heidelberg, 2009/2013, 1537.
[4] M. Zhang, C. Beetle, J.A.S. Kelso, E. Tognoli, J. Royal Society Interface 16 (2019) 20190360.
[5]J.A.S. Kelso & D.A. Engstrøm, The Complementary Nature, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
[6] A. Sloan, N.A. Jones, J.A.S. Kelso, International Congress of Infant Studies, July 6-9, 2020
[7] J.A.S. Kelso, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (2016) 490.