Contents - Index

5.1.   Top-Down Versus Bottom-Up Thinking                          (Top)

There are two fundamentally different ways to study complex systems.  The traditional approach is to view complex phenomena from the top down and construct components, relationships, and functions from surface phenomena like behavior.  A more recent approach is to view complex systems from the bottom up and explain surface phenomena in terms of higher level self-organized patterns of low level entities - a process referred to as "emergence."  A popular example is the study of the human brain.  One approach looks at behavior and tries to figure out how the brain is built and functions to produce the behaviors.  The other approach starts with neurons and low level entities and asks how they may have self-organized into higher levels of complexity.  Another popular example is the study of ant colonies in which individual ants instinctively do what they do in response to their immediate environment, including the ants around them, yet the outcome is some higher level of organization necessary to the survival of the colony.  

Political systems are complex systems and are therefore no less subject to these different perspectives than other complex systems.  The bottom-up perspective will tell us how advocacy nets are really  "little emergent democracies."  It will tell us how these public interest nets are different from traditional interest groups.  It will tell us how leadership in those nets is different from leadership in traditional groups and it will tell us about the real world limitations on those networks and what their futures may bring.  Also, of great importance to our study, the emergence approach will tell us how to evaluate A-Nets and how to measure performance and other properties relevant to democracy in transition. The exciting thing about the bottom-up approach side is that it leaves open the possibility participation may increase even to the point that much of public decision-making is done by the people.  

In previous discussion, we have described the problems of contemporary representative democracy in terms of an imbalance of powers in the system.  This is a top-down perspective and it is necessary to an understanding of the ailing American democracy and what is necessary to fix it.  In some respects the two approaches, top-down and bottom-up, seem to be on separate journeys because they are so different.  But, both approaches taken alone ultimately run into difficulties and dead-ends.  Many scientists believe that the greatest advances in science will come from the interplay of the two approaches.   Here too, we believe that drawing on both will produce insights that we could not have with one alone.  

For an extended discussion of these issues, see White Paper -Explanation Versus Intervention

Previous  Next


To Comment Click Here

Materials

References
Ito, Joi, Emergent Democracy Paper, See Weblog References for Democracy and the Internet.
Boyd, Lawrence, "Explanation Versus Intervention in Complex Systems, White Paper

(Top)