Johnson Reading Assignment

Throughout the essay, Johnson develops on the idea of complexity. At the start, Johnson describes the behavior of the ants in Gordon’s ant colonies with “intelligent and personality and learning that emerges from the bottom up” (Johnson 194). Bottom up initially means that the behavior comes from the natural instinct of the species. There is no authoritative figure, like a queen ant, that tells every ant what to do. Instead, the ants act on their own instincts that derive from their genes. This sort of complex behavior allows for complete independence and freedom.

The meaning of complexity behavior further changes in Johnson’s retelling of the formation of the city of Manchester. Johnson then concludes that the science of complexity can be one of two very different ideas: a sensory overload or a self-organizing system. The former is the relatively simple concept that complexity is made up of so many different experiences that it ultimately makes no sense. The latter is the far more interesting concept. Complexity dictates that “larger patterns can emerge out of uncoordinated local actions” (199). This belief shows that cities are so intricate and complex that while they themselves may consist of seemingly random events, the city itself is actually so detailed and laid out in larger systems that come to fruition by themselves. Patterns start to emerge from what first seemed like chaos.

Finally, Johnson introduces Weaver’s classification of complexity. The two types of complexity are disorganized complexity and organized complexity. Disorganized complexity is familiar; it is the type with so many independent variables that it can only be solved by statistics and probability. Organized complexity, however, is more intricate. In this, while there is an abundance of variables, they are all interconnected and dependent on one another.

From all three of these examples, Johnson pulls apart and analyzes the various definitions of complexity. While each situation tries to define complexity in a slightly different way, the common theme of approaching complicated situations from the bottom up applies to all of the situations. Furthermore, Johnson comes to the realization that complexity is certainly not random. Instead, the variables of every event are connected in an extensive web with its own life.