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Unconventional views on human complexity
By Anne Sarzin

FROM LEFT: CO-DIRECTOR OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS RESEARCH CENTRE, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR JOHN GALLOWAY; PRO-VICE-CHANCELLOR (RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT), PROFESSOR LESLEY JOHNSON; PROFESSOR JOHN CASTI OF THE SANTA FE INSTITUTE IN THE USA; AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE COMPLEX SYSTEMS RESEARCH CENTRE, SURESH SOOD

One of the world's best known science writers in the field of complex systems, Professor John Casti of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, sounds prophetic and mystical as he predicts future trends and events - but his forecasts are solidly grounded in an understanding of the complexity of human history.

On Professor Casti's recent visit to UTS, he discussed several intellectual and commercial projects with staff from the Complex Systems Research Centre in the Faculty of Business.

Professor Casti - whose current research in the area of socionomics is concerned with processes governing historical events, trends and timescales - debunks conventional explanations for the rise and fall of civilisations, world events or the overall patterns of history. "Conventional wisdom is always wrong, not just sometimes or occasionally but always," he said.

Professor Casti substantiates his claim with strong evidence, historical data, and compelling arguments. Conventional explanations suggest that actions cause moods or thoughts, whereas Professor Casti, who defines himself as a contrarian, takes the opposing view that social moods generate actions.

"If you think like a physicist, then you believe Newton's first law of motion that objects stay in their state of motion unless acted upon by an outside force - and in Newtonian physics that argument works really well.

"So this physics' notion of causality has become so ingrained in people's thought patterns that they transfer it to the social realm and imagine that finance is like physics or human beings like billiard balls. Whereas actions or events in the social realm have causes, which are social moods."

He asserts that the herding mentality and instincts, which are hard-wired into the most primitive part of every human brain, generate social moods associated with specific timeframes. "Ideas and thoughts move around like a contagious disease and at some point achieve a critical mass, which means that a population has a particular mood at a given time," he said. "If you have a good way of measuring the social mood, then you have a preview of coming attractions."

Professor Casti and his colleagues involved in the science of socionomics are confident that financial markets and the Dow Jones industrial average are the best measures of social mood and reflect the collective investment decisions of millions of people placing bets on the future.

For socionomists, understanding these fluctuating patterns provides insight into historical events and future trends. They deduce that major wars, for example, occur when there are bearish trends over several years. "Today we're at the top of a major upswing and we're turning that corner into a downward corrective phase," Professor Casti predicts.

"In the short term, lady's skirt lengths and Sydney's property prices will go down, and there's an increased likelihood of major international conflicts that will make the Gulf War look like a warm-up for the serious main event."

Despite Professor Casti's socionomic analysis and forecasts, he evades pinpointing the where and the when of turbulent social events, conceding that the patterns are in the realm of probability and therefore attempting to achieve more precise predictions, a potential area of collaborative research with complexity scientists at UTS.

"We interact with complex systems without understanding how they work," he said. "If you don't understand how the systems function or get the direction of causality all wrong, it's like trying to understand planetary motion by believing that the earth is at the centre of the solar system. Since it's not, you have an erroneous assumption at the heart of your theory."