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This book is the first attempt to provide a general theory of self-destruction in complex systems applicable to natural, social and cultural phenomena.
The contributors work collaboratively to prove that many of the nondistributed complex systems in nature and society sooner or later experience critical development leading to unintended and irreversible self-annihilation. The individual chapters also show that the relations of such systems to their own distinctiveness and other systems may result in specific communicative pathologies (such as redundancy, inflation and noisy signalling) which tend to mitigate or reinforce each other, depending on circumstances. Finally, the volume updates some popular models of systemic self-destruction―from autoimmunity and self-organized criticality to imperial overstretch―and discusses some prominent cases (from supernova explosions to the civil war following the Russian Revolution of 1917).
The interdisciplinary style of narration ensures the accessibility of the materials and theories presented for the specialists and students from different fields. As such, it will appeal to those interested in complexity studies from the areas of sociology, history, media and communication studies, immunology, computer science, literary criticism, cultural studies, political science and international relations.
Dedication
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Saving “Self-Destruction” From Itself in the Times of COVID and War
Some Thoughts on Systems and Their Self-Destruction
Studying Communicative Mechanisms of Self-Destruction in Complex Systems: Structures, Modes and Self-Reinforcing Dynamics
Reproduction and Eventual Dissolution of Some New Guinea Secret Cults in the Light of an Overlapping Generations Model
Entropy Dynamics and Self-Destruction: The Self-Action Model in a Recursive Hierarchy
Signalling, Vagueness and Destruction of Meaning in Political Ritual
Semantic Inflation and Systemic Breakups in Nature and Society
Reading John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World: Tacit Segmentation, Robust Proximal Codes and the Elusive Meaning of ‘Counter-Revolution’ in Russia (October–November 1917)
Self-Destruction and the Politics of Derridean Autoimmunity
Index