4 Some concepts related to complexity

4.5 Order and disorder

Figure 1: Complete Order, Chaos and Complete Disorder

The immediate reaction is to judge that the first and last diagrams are simple and the middle one relatively complex (leading to diagrams such as figure 2), but this is due to the facts that our perceptions `filter out' the complexity of the right-hand diagram and that we interpret it as representing a situation with no rules. Thus, we are not judging these uniformly; it may well be that the right hand diagram represents such a complex situation that we don't recognise it. To illustrate this, consider the possibility that there may be a small version of the left-hand diagram included in the middle and a small version of the middle diagram included in the right-hand diagram (as in figure 3).

Figure 2: Presumed graph of disorder against complexity

Figure 3: Possible diagrammatic inclusions

If this is the case, we are forced to judge the diagrams in order of increasing complexity from left to right. Again, we see the importance of the language of representation. If we were considering the complexity of some (assumed) rules to generate these diagrams, then the original intuitions would be preserved. The confusion comes because such diagrams do not have an inherent language*1 - we have to impose one on them.

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