Energy Flow, Emergent Complexity, and Collapse

Civilizations grow in complexity given the right circumstances. And all too often they end up collapsing. History is replete with examples. Joseph Tainter, among others, has examined collapse from the standpoint of decreasing marginal return on investment in increasing complexity, which he posits is the most common factor in collapsed societies. The key question one must ask is: What critical circumstance (if there is one factor above all others) enables a society to grow in complexity in the first place? If we find an answer to that question we may also find what causes the decrease in marginal returns as complexity increases. This is certainly a growing concern for our modern civilizations. I advance a systems theoretical and principled thesis, below, that puts the increased flow of energy as the key enabler of increases in complexity. And I examine what we might expect from declines in that flow rate when sources are depleted.

If you haven’t read Tainter’s 1988 (some would say prescient) book, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University Press), or if you haven’t read it recently, you would do well to do so at your earliest convenience.

I had the great good fortune to meet Joe at the Second Annual Biophysical Economics Meeting in Syracuse, NY this last October. He came to give the plenary talk in which he connected energy return on energy investment with his theory of how evolving complexity in societies figures into collapses, when they occur. I then stopped over in Logan Utah on my way home to Washington state and spent some quality time talking with him that evening over a single malt scotch (a label I had never heard of before – very smokey!)

So I thought I’d dig out my copy of Collapse when I got home and re-read it. I remembered not being quite as interested in the details of Roman and Mayan societies in the way an archeologist would be (Joe’s credentials) and had probably skimmed too much. His lecture at Syracuse piqued my interest now that I know a bit more about what seems to be going on in our modern societies in the post-peak oil world. Much to my chagrin I couldn’t find my copy. Actually I vaguely remembered having borrowed it from the library (I wasn’t rich enough in 1988 to have much of a personal library), so I quickly got it from Amazon, along with a few other classics on the topic, and read it again. This time with more informed, if not fresher eyes.

Joe’s thesis boils down to this: Societies evolve greater organizational and technical complexity to solve social problems that arise due to external forces or population pressures or overuse of natural resources, etc., and at some point, the marginal beneficial returns (problems solved) begin to decline leading to lowered margins of error for dealing with possible catastrophic impacts. Societies collapse when increasing complexity no longer has a payoff and something else bad happens.

As I read this anew I thought about other areas that I have been developing some expertise in, namely the evolution of complexity in dynamical systems (from general systems science) under the influence of the flow of high potential energy. I felt inspired to write more about that since I think there are some general principles that we could use to decipher what is going on in the world today and have some sense of what to expect from tomorrow.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6181