Abstract
Social complexity is a fundamental concept in Computational Social Science (CSS), based on Simon’s theory of artifacts and the complex adaptive systems paradigm. This is the first of three chapters on social complexity. The emphasis in this chapter is primarily on descriptive aspects. After providing some initial working definitions of social complexity—which are further developed in the next two chapters—the chapter examines empirical, descriptive aspects of where, when, and how social complexity originated in the “cradles of civilization.” This material on descriptive origins of social complexity is critical for a factual understanding of social complexity as a global, cross-cultural phenomenon. Important conceptual aspects of social complexity also include a closer examination of bounded rationality and near-decomposability, ideas central to CSS theory and research. The social complexity that exists today originated thousands of years ago at specific locations under specific circumstances, not in some arbitrary way. How do we know this from a scientific perspective? This chapter addresses this question by examining current methods for measuring social complexity, including the use of multiple lines of evidence and quantitative scales of complexity and related phenomena.
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Notes
- 1.
A more formal definition of “chiefdom” and “state” is provided later in Sect. 5.4.
- 2.
This is the same notation used to denote preferences, since they too are usually expressed on an ordinal-level scale. In LaTeX, these are written as backslash-prec for \(\prec \) and backslash-succ for \(\succ \). Symbols such as greater than or less than should be avoided for ordinal relations, because they imply interval- and ratio-levels of measurement.
- 3.
The acronym “kya” has the standard meaning of “thousands of years ago”.
- 4.
As quoted in Dynamic Work Simplification (1971: 12), by W. Clements Zinck.
- 5.
Herbert A. Simon, Daniel Kahnemann , and other social, behavioral, and economic scientists have been recognized for their pioneering work in this area by receiving the Nobel Prize.
- 6.
The Stevens level of measurement of a given variable refers to whether it is a nominal-, ordinal-, interval-, or ratio-scale variable.
- 7.
A classic example of this is the Great Wall of China, but there are also numerous other examples of similar long-lasting structures, such as irrigation canals in ancient Mesopotamia, road networks in Mesoamerica, among others that are only visible through modern satellite imagery and remote sensing.
- 8.
The Peregrine-Ember-Ember (2004) scale of social complexity is one of the current Guttman scales developed by anthropologists. It is based on the most comprehensive sample of early human cultures, based on the worldwide Outline of Archeological Traditions from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), based at Yale University, and builds on earlier scales of social complexity developed by R.L. Carneiro , L. Freeman , G.P. Murdock , and C. Provost , among others.
- 9.
Notation here is different from the original UN annual report, which uses abbreviations and acronyms rather than proper mathematical symbols.
- 10.
Many estimators of the Hurst parameter are available, as reviewed by Gao et al. (2007).
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Cioffi-Revilla, C. (2017). Social Complexity I: Origins and Measurement. In: Introduction to Computational Social Science. Texts in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50131-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50131-4_5
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