Complexity Theory: CALL @ The Edge of Chaos by Stephen A. Shucart 

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Telling Stories 

Doyne Farmer, of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos, says that science is about telling stories. These stories explain how the world came to be. Prehistoric shamans told Creation Myths, epic legends, and fairy tales. Their purpose was to help us understand who we are and how we should relate to a magical universe. 

Today's scientists have updated those early creation myths with the story of the Big Bang. Quarks, electrons and neutrinos came flying out of that primal explosion and gradually condensed into matter. Our sun began like any other medium-sized star, and the Earth formed like many other planets. The story continues with life spontaneously emerging from the slime almost four billion years ago. It evolved through countless variations and extinctions until our ancestors strode the African savanna over 3 million years ago, and slowly acquired tools, language and culture. 

Now there is the story of Complexity. 

Complexity is a new way of viewing the collective behavior of many simple but interacting parts. The kind of part makes no difference, it could be an atom, molecule, neuron, morpheme, or even a computer bit. Complexity Theory deals with the potential evolutionary behavior of macroscopic collections of these parts. Their interactions lead to emergent properties, coherent collective phenomena that can only be described at levels higher than those of the individual units. 

For Complexity to emerge in a system two components are necessary. The first is Time, an irreversible medium where things can happen. Time flows from a closed and ordered past to an open and chaotic future. In such a system we can regard the border between the past and future, i.e. Now, as the Edge of Chaos, that point in a system where Complex Adaptive behavior can most easily occur. It should be noted that at the quantum level time can flow in either direction. The second element is nonlinearity. Nonlinear systems do not obey the simple rules of addition. Small effects on one level of organization produce large effects at the same or different levels. The most famous example of nonlinearity is Chaos Theory's notorious "Butterfly Effect". A butterfly in (pick an exotic locale) flaps its wings and this causes a tornado in (pick a mundane location). Nonlinearity produces complex and frequently unexpected results. 

Complexity affords a holistic perspective with special insights into life, consciousness, language, physio-chemical systems. The human brain is the supreme example of Complexity achieved by such biological evolution. 

According to the science of Complexity life originated at the edge of chaos, and this edge of chaos image is one of the keys for understanding the general laws of pattern formation in non-equilibrium systems throughout the universe. In between the two extremes of order and chaos is a kind of "phase transition" called "The Edge of Chaos." This is where the components of a complex adaptive system never quite lock in place and never quite dissolve into turbulence. This is where a system is both solid enough to store information, and yet fluid enough to transmit it. "Solid" and "fluid" are not just two fundamental phases of matter such as water and ice, but two fundamental classes of dynamical behavior in general. 

By now you must be wondering where CALL comes into all this, and how it relates to the edge of chaos. CALL software uses computers as a tool to catalyze language learning, and the science of Complexity is intricately entwined with and crucially dependent upon computer technology. Because of the similar nature of cognitive architecture and computer architecture, a computer has the potential to become a primary tool for language acquisition in the future. The goal of this column is to show educators the point of maximum information processing in that complex adaptive system known as the human mind. The edge of chaos may well be the region where CALL can be utilized most effectively. 

Learning is as fundamental to cognition as evolution is to biology. The ability to learn must have been built into the cognitive architecture from the beginning rather than slapped on at the end. Thinking and learning are but two aspects of the same process in the brain. The mind is constructed to process information. It stores information, it maps sensory information and makes complex transformations to produce action. 

Learning and evolution don't just push agents to the edge of chaos, they move agents along the edge of chaos in the direction of greater complexity. This should be the key to the most effective utilization of CALL software. I hope to deal with this concept in more detail in future columns. I plan to touch on other topics in this column such as; 1) the place of natural selection and self-organization in the evolution of the brain, 2) artificial life and the possibility of CALL software evolving in digital Biodiversity reserves located on the Web, 3) speculations on Virtual Competence - the next level of hierarchical organization up from Communicative Competence.  For Further Reading: 

Coveney, P. and Highfield, R. (1995). Frontiers of Complexity - The Search for Order in a Chaotic World, Ballantine Books: New York 

Gell-Man M. (1994). The Quark and the Jaguar, Little, Brown & Co.: London 

Gleick J. (1987). Chaos - Making a New Science, Penguin: New York. 

Kaufman, S. (1995) At Home in the Universe, OUP: Oxford. 

Lewin, R. (1992) Complexity - Life at the Edge of Chaos, Macmillan: New York. 

Waldrop, M. (1992) Complexity - The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, Simon & Schuster: New York.