Complexity
In followup to last week’s video regarding Complexity, I’d like to take a look at Eric Berlow’s TedTalk Simplifying Complexity, describing Network Analysis, an attempt to model a Complex System based on what we might observe by investigating the near-order interactions observed “under the hood.” Applicable to our work in Medicine, this would involve the suggestion that the observations of Anatomy, Physiology, Pathophysiology, and Pharmacology might be sufficient to predict the operations of the living organism in health, disease, and healing.
Regarding Berlow’s assertion, I have one simple observation; his prime example is the U.S. Counterinsurgency program in Afghanistan (how’d that work out?).
Network analysis, such as that described by Berlow, can certainly approximate the behavior of a Complex System; but all models are wrong; some may be useful. (George Box, 1976). So long as we recognize that these predictions are approximations based on near-order interactions found by “looking under the hood,” and recognize that distant interactions not taken into consideration may be highly significant in systems organized by distributed control, we might tentatively attend to mechanistic explanations while remaining on the lookout for Things Unexpected.
This is not to suggest that a study of Anatomy, Physiology, Pathophysiology, and Pharmacology is not of interest or use to us; it most certainly is, which is why I devoted considerable time & effort in creating my online course on these topics, as well as am devoting considerable energies to discussing Materia Medica study (homeopathic pharmacology) on this platform. What it is NOT, is sufficiently predictive of the operations of the living organism or the pharmacologic effects (desired & undesired) of medicinal substances on the living organism.