The 9 Laws of God

To create something from nothing is the ultimate challenge. The new Complexity Sciences are proving, that if we understand how natural systems evolve over time to create new forms, we will see these nine laws in operation.

Click on any of the nine laws to find out more:

Distribute being
Control from the bottom-up
Cultivate increasing returns
Grow by chunking
Maximise the fringes
Honour your errors
Pursue no optima
Seek persistent disequilibrium
Change changes itself

Kevin Kelly compiled these Nine Laws of God' which he believes are the natural processes that play a part in creating something from nothing. I have summarised them below, but they are explored in more detail in Kevin's book 'Out of Control'. Published by Fourth Estate in 1995. ISBN 1-85702-308-0

Distribute being
Life is distributed over a multitude of smaller units (which themselves may be distributed into even smaller complex adaptive systems). When the sum of the parts add up to something that is more than the parts, then an extra being (the something from nothing) emerges. The intellect of a human being, a swarm of bees, the behaviour of an economy, the productivity of organisations, an ecosystem - they all emerge from the interactions of large distributed systems.

This law reminds us of the power of the collective, when all act as if they were one. Unpredictable things can happen, which could not have been predicted by analysing the parts.

Control from the bottom-up
In the natural world, everything is connected to everything else in a distributed network. This allows everything to happen at once, so that living entities behave like octopuses, exploring the situation to find a way through or round the problem. It means that governance can arise from the most humble of interdependent acts done locally, not from the command and control authority at the centre. In this way, even a mob can steer itself.

To get something for nothing, control must rest at the bottom within simplicity.

Cultivate increasing returns
Each time you think, feel or do something it is more likely to happen again. It get's hard wired in the brain. It's known as positive feedback or snowballing. Success breeds success. From a social dynamics perspective it reflects the notion that "To those that have, more will be given." Anything which alters its environment to increase its production is playing the game of increasing returns. You can see this rule operating in economics, biology, computerscience and human psychology. Confidence builds confidence. Life on Earth begets more life of ever increasing complexity. Order genrates more order.

As Ghandi once said "just be the change you want to make."

Grow by chunking
The only way to make a complex system that works is to begin with a simple system that works. Attempts to install a highly complex organisation, without growing it , leads to falure. To assemble a priarie takes time, even if you had all the species of plant and animal available to you. It is the balance and harmony generated through their evolving interactions over a long period of time that produces sustainability.

Complexity is created by assembling it incrementally from simple modules that can operate independently.

Maximise the fringes
A uniform entity like an all white organisation in a multi-ethnic community must adapt to world around it by ocassional and potentially life threatening changes. A diverse organisation can adapt in a thousand daily mini-chnages, staying in a state of permanent, but never fatal churning. Diversity favours remote borders, the outskirts, hidden corners, moments of chaos and isolated clusters.

A healthy fringe speeds adaptation, increases resiliance, and is almost always a source of innovation.

Honour your errors
A trick works for a while until everyone starts doing it. To advance from the ordinary requires a new game or a new territory. Transformation in other words. But the process of change means going outside the conventional or traditional way of doing things looks and feels like a mistake. It doesn't feel right. The most brilliant acts of human genius, are an act of trial and error. As Wlilliam Blake observed "To be an error and to be cast out is part of gods design."

Making mistakes must be a critical feature of the change process. Evolution can be thought of as systematic risk management.

Pursue no optima - have multiple goals
Simple organisations can be efficient, but complex adaptive ones cannot be. This is because a complex organisation has many masters and none of them can be served exclusively. Rather that strive for optimisation, a large complex organisation can only survive by "satisficing" (making good enough) a multitude of functions.

For example, there must be a trade off between exploiting or improving on existing ways of doing things, or diverting resources to experiment and find new new paths.

Seek persistent disequilibrium
Neither consistency nor constant change will support creativity. A good creation, like good jazz, must balance a stable formula with frequent out of kilter notes. Equilibrium means death. Yet, unless a system stablises to an equilibrium point, it is no better than an explosion and jusr as soon dead. So, nothing is both equilibrium and disequilibrium. Something that exists must be in a state of persistent disequilibrium - a contunuous state of surfing, forever on the 'edge of chaos' or death.

It's a stste of dynamic balance - like riding a bike. Forever moving to avoid falling.

Change changes itself
Change can be structured. This is what large complex systems do: they coordinate change. But one change effects another change which then has an affect and produces another change, and so it snowballs. If the rules of the game are composed from the bottom-up, then the interacting forces will alter the rules to fit local changes. Over time even the rules for change get changed.