Self-Destruction of Complex Systems

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.

Kirill Postoutenko is a Senior Researcher in the Special Research Area 1288 (Practices of Comparison) at Bielefeld University, Germany, and an Adjunct Associate Professor (Docent) of Russian literature and culture at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is the author and editor of eleven books and ninety-five articles devoted to systems and communication theory, conversation analysis, history of identity, history of media and communication in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and the history of Russian poetry and literary criticism. His most recent books include the edited volumes Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics (together with Darin Stephanov, 2021), Media and Communication in the Soviet Union: General Perspectives (together with Alexey Tikhomirov and Dmitri Zakharine, 2022) and Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’: Asymmetrical Concepts in European Discourse (2022).