Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Old Economics New Economics •Decreasing returns •Much use of increasing returns •Based on 19th-century physics (equilibrium, stability, deterministic dynamics) •Based on biology (structure, pattern, self-organization, life cycle) •People identical •Focus on individual life; people separate and different •If only there were no externalities and all had equal abilities, we'd reach Nirvana •Externalities and differences become driving force. No Nirvana. System constantly unfolding. •Elements are quantities and prices •Elements are patterns and possibilities •No real dynamics in the sense that everything is at equilibrium •Economy is constantly on the edge of time. It rushes forward, structures constantly coalescing, decaying, changing. •Sees subject as structurally simple •Sees subject as inherently complex •Economics as soft physics •Economics as high-complexity science