PS. about measuring complexity...

Bruce Edmonds (B.Edmonds@MMU.AC.UK)
Mon, 17 Jul 1995 14:05:52 GMT


Sorry, in the excitement, I missed this out of my last e-mail:

PS. Just because my home page says I am _interested_ in the
"philosophy and measurement of Complexity per se" does NOT mean that
I think that Complexity can always be measured - just like someone
may well collect "perpetual-motion" machines without beliving in the
possiblity of perpetual motion!!!!

W.r.t. some languages and types of difficulty of "specification of
overall behaviour" I think this is possible, but I think that for
some it is definitely NOT. Which, I think, is pretty well inevitable
from the bredth of my approach to the definition of "complexity".

I am not directly concerned with a definition of life. Clearly
whatever you mean by "Complex" we are it (though we would be pretty
big-headed to think we were the only example). Of course, this
depends on you language of representation and the type of difficulty
of overall description you are concerned with.

Again: I do not _reject_ Rosen's approach, but as a *definition* of
"complexity" I think it is one specific approach (NOTE: I an NOT
talking about Rosen's general approach to systems etc. this might be
general). I see his definition as a special case of mine.

----------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Edmonds
Centre for Policy Modelling,
Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Building,
Aytoun Street, Manchester M1 3GH. UK.
e-mail b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk
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