Nobel winner presents updated way to study complex systems

[Dover]

Professor presents updated way to study complex systems
Common framework would aid cumulation of isolated knowledge

The often-used one-size-fits-all approach to policies aimed at achieving sustainable social-ecological systems needs to be updated with a diagnostic tool to help scholars from multiple disciplines better frame the question and think through the variables, asserts social scientist and political economist Elinor Ostrom.

"Scholars have tended to develop simple theoretical models to analyze aspects of resource problems and to prescribe universal solutions," Ostrom writes in a Perspective article appearing in the July 24 Science special section on complexity.

"A common, classificatory framework is needed to facilitate multidisciplinary efforts toward a better understanding of complex social-ecological systems," writes Ostrom, who holds research and faculty positions at Arizona State University and Indiana University.

"Understanding a complex whole requires knowledge about specific variables and how their component parts are related," she says. The study of complex systems doesn't need to be complex; rather than eliminate complexity from such systems "we must learn how to dissect and harness (it)," she says.

Ostrom's Science essay presents an updated version of a multilevel, nested framework for analyzing outcomes achieved in social-ecological systems. In the writing, she provides an example identifying 10 subsystem variables that affect the likelihood of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable social-ecological system.

"This is not a KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach. If we keep it too simple, we lose an understanding of what's going on out there," she says. "On the other hand, frameworks and theories always have to focus in on a subset of all of the variables operating in a complex system."

..cont'd

http://asunews.asu.edu/20090723_complexityframework






Original Text of A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems is here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19628857

[depakid]

1. Interesting interview on NPR

The host tried over and over to pigeonhole her- and use some of what they've doubtlessly read in snippets to support anti-government sorts of positions.

Dr. Ostrom handled that quite deftly- even adding some interesting homilies from her past.

Touche'