Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) are the darlings of the new science of complexity. They have been used to describe life processes from individual cells to species to all of life on Earth. They include human organizations from cities and governments to corporations. They even include animal groups such as schools and herds and flocks.
Characteristics of CAS
There are several key features that these complex adaptive systems have in common. They consist of groups of individuals that mostly go about their business without a “higher” purpose. Yet the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Another key characteristic is that such systems are created spontaneously. There are reasons that cities grow, but these do not include a conscious decision to build one (except Brasilia, which was a disaster compared to organically grown cities). At any rate, we are not talking about individual cities here, but the concept of a city. The idea of gathering people in one spot occurred across the globe independently and spontaneously. Starting up a corporation now is not spontaneous. The evolution of the corporation was.
New behaviors emerge when individuals join groups. You can’t have a stampede with just one cow. Riot participants do things they wouldn’t normally do. This is often a simple function of mass. Get enough people together and they start acting funny.
CAS tend to expand until something stops them. The home range of animal species changes as the environment, especially the fates of rival species change. A herd will spread out until a predator arrives. Empires conquer. Corporations increase market share.
Evolution
Individual critters (plants or animals) don’t evolve, but their species do. Individuals die of old age, which is not a characteristic of species or corporations. Evolution mainly derives from competition, according to Darwin. Recently, the benefits of cooperation, as opposed to competition, have entered the conversation.
Human CAS
The focus here is on human organizations. Over the course of history man has tried lots of them. Here we divide them into two categories, those that protect the people and their lands and those with other purposes. The latter include corporations, which exist to make money, and charities to give it away. The main distinction between these and the former is that the non-protective groups are not allowed to use force. Soldiers and policemen are.
Land protection organizations evolved into governments. For 90% of human history the dominant form of human group was the band – a few dozen hunter-gatherers. This form of organization is not usually called a government. It does serve to protect the people – from animals mostly at that point in history. It also has a justice system, which is required as part of the social contract. These are the two major functions of government today, defense and justice.
The social contract is basically that you must behave as the group wishes in order to enjoy the benefits of the group. This even applies to animal groups in a limited way. “Move with the group or get eaten!” The amount of freedom an individual gives up relates to the left-right political spectrum of today, where the survey question is, “How much government do you think is proper?” The basic question, however, is far older than governments or even humanity, since pre-humans were social animals, too.
As agriculture replaced hunting the population grew. The band became a hamlet. This didn’t change things much. The chief of a hamlet was not much different than the chief of a band. Later, hamlets expanded to cities and the first city-states. The next big thing was empire, which don’t necessarily start with cities. After that, more or less in response to that, came kingdoms. Oddly, it was an agreement between kings (in the Peace of Westphalia) that gave rise to the modern nation-state. Clans and tribes lost out to empires, kings, and nations.
Some societies never evolved beyond the band and still survive by hunting and gathering. These societies have avoided the memes of the modern world by using a peaceful defensive meme, “If threatened, run away!” They have been pushed out of desirable lands. Bushmen were pushed to the Kalahari. Several groups, Eskimo, Sami, and Chukchi, moved north. Most such retreated to the jungle. They might have the right idea. Civilization could be overrated. Those societies might outlive ours, which is the ultimate metric of success. However, the ability of a society to chart its own destiny is also important. These societies continue to exist only because they have nothing that more aggressive societies want.
Band, empire, kingdom, and nation are the major organizational forms that define history. This is roughly parallel to the major changes in human society based on the number of classes we have. Bands are basically classless societies. Empires, a direct product of the Barbarian meme, gave us an upper class that dominated a lower class. This didn’t change with kings (although membership in the ruling class tended to be inherited rather than merited. Barbarian empires rewarded merit – the best slayers became the leaders). A middle class came with the development of the nation-state and the Trust meme. The memes that triggered these changes are, to say the least, important.