The Fall of Rome - was it complexity?

[Tarbicus]

Read this summing up of an article in New Scientist that I read last night (even though the review is very specific to modern technology, the full article is broader and cites the Mayans, etc) :

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/treder20080412/

Issue to look at is New Scientist - 05 April 2008

The full article can be read for a subscription: HERE
http://www.newscientist.com/contents/issue/2650.html

[Goffredo]

Was it complexity?
Simple answer?


No

[Tarbicus]

Simple response?

You haven't read the article.

[Goffredo]

Hi
of course I was being obnoxious, just for fun.
I've read a few things and heard several seminars on complexity but in this case I only skimmed this one. In physics complexity is fun stuff but it is also a buzz word and outside of sciences it is fashionable. I am skeptic but that doesn't mean I am completely comfortable with traditional history and don't long for a "theory".

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

Complexity and size of a society (i.e. state/empire) make it much harder, may be even impossible ultimately, to satisfy the interests of all members of society. Finally large groups within society will develop whose interests can't be combined any longer. At this point a state looses its legitimation in the group at disadvantage and those people won't act in the interest of the nation any longer. If an empire isn't able to cope with this challenge and doesn`t generate an idea which unites its people, it will either collaps and fragment (as happens often today in civil war) or be so weakened in this process, that it will succumb to external forces.
So complexity is surely an important part of the Roman decline.

[Goffredo]

Hi Tiberius
it can and has been argued that complex societies have greater resources and are more flexible and resistant compared to simple rigid societies that fall apart if one essential ingredient is damaged.

To say, at the level that we are, that complexity is important is just too vague to be useful.

[Paullus Scipio]

I haven't read the hypothesis, but do the authors explain how the Empire was more "complex" in 400 Ad than in 200 AD or 100 AD or earlier ?

One problem I have always had with "explaining" the fall of the Roman Empire is that the problems were different, but no more complex than earlier.

I believe it would be truer to say that the Roman Empire "evolved" to a point where it was no longer recognisable as the Empire of old.......in other words, that it never "fell" but rather evolved......

[Goffredo]

The trobule with thinking about the fall/evolution of the Roman empire is that people always forget to keep in mind what happened in the Eastern half.

The Eastern half indeed evolved over centuries. I think that up to the end of Heraclius (575-641) and the arrival of Islam on the scene, the eastern half was a very straight forward evolution of the roman empire. The Byzantine empire then evolved further as more and different forces distorted and shaped it in original ways. Instead the western half evolved into something quite different in a less than a century. I call that a fall!

The transformist approach has the merit of showing how much the "roman world" of the 4th and 5th centuries had evolved from the earlier centuries and it highlight in new ways the various forces that played. Great, but one mustn't hide the fact that the western half died. Of course you could argue that dying is a transformation (evolution) as indeed it is if you only stress continuity of matter. It is indeed a healthy and refreshing lesson, but then one should return with renewed enthusiasm and respect to adress the qualitative features that make all the difference.

I think it was Gibbon that said that the only thing can be said with certainty about the fall of the roman empire is that it indeed fell!

[Tarbicus]

I'll just point out the relevant factors from the article, that may help those who haven't read it to mull it over some more (the article is by Debora MacKenzie):

Archaeologist and author of 'The Collapse of Complex Socoeties',Joseph Tainter, of University of Utah, says; "For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increased complexity in human societies."
If crops fail because rain is patchy, build irrigation canals. When they silt up, organise dredging crews. When the bigger crop yields lead to a bigger population, build more canals. When there are too many for ad hoc repairs, install a management bureaucracy, and tax people to pay for it. When they complain, invent tax inspectors and a system to record the sums paid. That much the Sumerians knew.

Every extra layer of organisation imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts, from building canals to educating scribes. Increasing complexity produces diminishing returns. Each hour of labour produces diminishing returns for every hour of labour.

To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet each problem solved means more complexity. Success generates a larger population, more kinds of specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle - and, ultimately, less bang for your buck.

Eventually, the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. Then when the climate changes, or the barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses. What emerges is a less coplex society, which is organised on a smaller scale or has been taken over by another group.


Now, call me an idiot, but I'm already feeling a certain amount of "Hmmm, where do I know that set of events from?"


head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, MA, Yaneer Bar Yam believes social organisations become steadily more complex as they are required to deal both with environmental problems and with challenges from from neighbouring societies who are also becoming more complex. This eventually leads to a fundamental shift in the way the society is organised.
"To run a hierarchy, managers cannot be less complex than the system they are managing."
As complexity increases, societies add ever more layers of management but, ultimately in a hierarchy, one individual has to try and get their head around the whole thing (now who could that have been in the Empire? :wink: ) and this starts to become impossible. At that point, hierarchies give way to networks in which decision-making is distributed (West and East Empires?).


One modern example of growing complexity creating its own obstacles, in my tiny mind, is ration books in World War Two. A relatively small number of civil servants with typewriters, pens and paper, using public transport, made a census of the entire UK's household units and its needs in a matter of weeks, and created an efficient system for food distribution.

Try that now using computer databases and all of the modern advantages of technology, and I would bet £1000 the same task would take many months and months.

I'm wondering if the Romans saw the same apply to them, especially in a time of growing pressure from outside.

[Tiberius Clodius Corvinus]

I'll just point out the relevant factors from the article

thanks for that ;-) )

Hi Tiberius
it can and has been argued that complex societies have greater resources and are more flexible and resistant compared to simple rigid societies that fall apart if one essential ingredient is damaged.

... its certainly right that complex societes have more ressources, but the point seems to me, whether these ressources can be combined and directed effectively towards an single goal. Further an result of organisational research is, that the bigger (hierarchical) organisations are, the more ineffective they become. so it sounds not unreasonable to me, that an state of over-complexity can be reached, that is part of the collapse of the Roman empire, mainly by weakening the empire internally.

[...] but do the authors explain how the Empire was more "complex" in 400 Ad than in 200 AD or 100 AD or earlier ?

In social science texts complexity is widely - very simplified said - understood and measured by a) the amount of a people who lives in cities and have an urban (more rational) lifestyle (i.e. are no peasants), and b) the amount of division of labour (specialisation). both points are complementary and are usually accompanied by a loss of social control on the individuals. It would be interesting to check the development of the Roman law, as this could be a good indicator for complexity.

One problem I have always had with "explaining" the fall of the Roman Empire is that the problems were different, but no more complex than earlier.

yes, the challenges are partially the same and had surely a similar amount of complexity, but I don't think, that MacKenzie writes about the complexity of the problems but more about complexity of society. A more complex society hasn't the same "tools" as a less organised one has to deal with the same problems.

[Hugh Fuller]

This is my opinion only, but it seems to me that a primary cause for the collapse of the Roman Empire was the constant civil wars over who would be sitting on the throne in whatever was the imperial seat at the moment. Try to imagine the amounts of blood and treasure wasted in these wars that could have been much better used in fighting the invading barbarians.

[SigniferOne]

I believe it would be truer to say that the Roman Empire "evolved" to a point where it was no longer recognisable as the Empire of old.......in other words, that it never "fell" but rather evolved......

I have a lot of difficulty understanding this sort of response. And pardon me if my reply is a little tetchy, because I've seen this statement repeated a number of times over a course of years.

Was not Rome sacked, something unthinkable in her lighter years? Was not it sacked by people who cared nothing for its statues or literary niceties? I just don't understand how one could deny the empirical fact of Roman collapse. It would be another thing to say that up to the fall, Roman empire evolved, in such a way that led to its collapse, but the collapse itself was not evolution or a gradual process in any way. It was abrupt, brutal, and final.

[Tarbicus]

Rome did not fall in a day, it was a gradual decline, and some would call it a transformation.

For a summary of the various theories, Wiki actually has a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of ... man_Empire

[Virilis]

I think Guy Halsall`s new & ground-breaking book "Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376 568 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks)" gives much food for thought about this complex phenomena.

It doesn`t exactly give any clearly defined explanations about the "fall" but gives some intellectual tools with which one can avoid too simplistic conclusions. I highly recommend the book :wink: !

[SigniferOne]

Rome did not fall in a day, it was a gradual decline, and some would call it a transformation.

Right, the empire transformed, from the principate, to the dominate, etc etc. But in whatever shape it was, the empire fell when Rome was sacked. When classical statues were carried off, and literature was destroyed. When the political order was crushed for the final time.

It is not a mystery that the Christians previously carried off and destroyed some of the statues; that they advocated and on occasion burned Classical literature. Yet that was all done under the umbrella of an existing, and working, political order. That was all still part of the 'transformation'. When the political order was destroyed, when the political rule over Spain, over Gaul, over Africa, even over most of Italy, was utterly annihilated, not by another organized force but by petty tribes, there is no other word to describe it but "collapse".

Nor is it an optional sort of 'collapse', perhaps compared to some other human 'collapses' which would be more evident. The fall of the Roman empire gives the very conceptual meaning which we imbue into the word 'collapse'. The event is where we get our conceptual idea of social fall from.