Complexity science for 12 year olds
Overcomplicated has to be the most vacuous book I’ve ever read. In fact I’m amazed that something like this could be passed off as a book.
There is such a lack of research that my mouth actually hung open in astonishment at a few places. Consider this absolute gem from page 83 – “A number of years ago, research was conducted to design a type of computer circuit”.
How many years ago? Where was the research conducted? By whom? What type of circuit?
These are the most basic questions any responsible author will answer, not only because they are important to understand the example, but more importantly because they place the example in a certain historical context. With none of that information, the reader is left wondering how to assimilate the sentence. Really, what was Arbesman thinking?
Arbesman treats the book like it is “Complexity Science in the 21st Century – for 12 year olds”. Science books are a little difficult to write for precisely this reason – very few authors have the wherewithal to properly explain difficult concepts. It requires a certain level of skill and experience which Arbesman clearly doesn’t have. On the contrary, Arbesman ends up explaining even the most basic things, thus insulting the reader’s intelligence.
But even the above factor could have been forgiven by innocuously assuming the book was actually meant for younger children and mistakenly got published for adults, were it not for probably the biggest shortcoming of the book.
Arbesman gives you no details. None at all. The level of generality which he manages to maintain throughout the book is remarkable. His narrative is nothing but a repetitive, stale and hollow enterprise – he gives no information, the sentences are just castles of sand holding no details. The information the entire book gives could very well be summed up in the following lines – as the level of technology increases, the parts eventually become so complex that no single human has any idea about how they work – they become kluges which are essentially patch upon patch of new parts (for example, both in the software and the legal world) which can’t be understood as a whole, are not understood in entirety by any one person, and behave in ways not expected by humans – their creators.
I lost count of the number of times he used phrases like “it’s just too complex” and “we fail to understand why they work”.
The other really disappointing aspect of the work is the number of references.
Arbesman’s idea of a book is to heavily reference the works of other authors and then present a patchwork formed by integrating all of them. There is absolutely nothing original that he offers – his whole narrative is essentially a summing up of recent research in a few topics, and even that could have been acceptable if only he had mentioned anything worthwhile from those references. He keeps quoting people and what they think, but not about any real research that they undertook.
I have read a few books on science, so I know it isn’t impossible to explain even the most difficult concepts in an engaging manner – where the reader actually turns over the last page with a satisfied smile on his face. But those books require real skill, intent and hard work – and Arbesman gives an impression of lacking all of these.
In all likelihood, Arbesman got up one fine day with the thought “let’s write about complexity science and finish a book before I go to sleep today” and proceeded in all earnestness. But he forgot that a book of science cannot thrive on (subjective) quotes – it must embrace facts and their analysis.
This book is amateurish, poorly researched and lacks substance. It is a huge disappointment and a complete waste of time. If you really want to read about complexity science, please go for Chaos by James Gleick.