The Complexity Theory

…Complexity Theory comes with its hint of doom, ominously reminding us that no civilization has ever survived the stresses of history, with the possible exception of China and Byzantium — in a much reduced state for 450 years following the 15th century Arab invasions. But Sumer, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Maya and even Rome all collapsed, primarily because they succumbed to overwhelming complexities.

Joseph Tainter, writing in The Collapse of Complex Societies, explains why. “For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies” (Ibid.). Food production is a classical example. Each time people find the solution to a food shortage — irrigation, fertilizer or plants with higher yields– the population rises to meet the food supply and the next problem to solve is more complicated and challenging. Every solution adds extra levels of organization, complexity and interdependence, which adds inefficiency and diminishing returns for the total amount of energy expended.


Progress is a process of perpetual problem solving, with each new solution adding more specialists and more layers of peripheral tasks that don’t directly address the problems being solved. A civilization finally peaks at its maximum level of complexity when all its efforts are being used just to maintain its equilibrium. Then an unusual adversity arises: invaders, crop failure, disease, climate change, depletion of a critical natural resource, or anything that stresses a structure already precariously balanced. Then the civilization collapses and reorganizes itself at a simpler level.

Civilization’s simplest structure is the hunter-gatherer tribe, a hierarchy with one leader and a few followers. Feudal societies are based on the same linear model. This explains why the catastrophe of the Black Plague of 1348 could kill about a third of Europe’s population without a discernible effect on the society’s stability — 80% of the people were peasant farmers so the system simply shrunk but held together.

Tainter contrasts this with a similar plague and death rate that struck the Roman empire in 170 CE. Although also hierarchical, the Romans had huge urban populations that were wholly “depended on peasants for grain, taxes and soldiers” (Ibid.), and a complex infrastructure of administrators, builders, labourers and slaves. The weakening of these lateral connections compromised the empire’s structure and set in motion an unstoppable and fatal decline.

Courier-Islander