WIPS - What is Complexity? Cancer as a Case Study

Paper available for pre-reading: Email Anya Plutynski for a copy. aplutyns@wustl.edu

Abstract: Cancer is typically spoken of as a “complex” disease. But, in what sense is cancer “complex”? Is there one sense in which cancer is complex, or several? Are cancer’s complex features instances of a general pattern or patterns? Does cancer instantiate general lawlike features typical of complex systems?

In this paper, my aim is first, to provide a taxonomy of the variety of ways in which cancers (or, aspects, or features of cancers) are “complex.” Second, it is to say how and why the complexity of cancer(s) matters for the future direction of basic science and cancer medicine. Third, it is to address whether, and to what extent these notions of complexity can be informed by complexity science, as well as the philosophical literature on complexity. A variety of philosophers of science have offered up accounts of complexity, whether in terms of paradigmatic features, or necessary and sufficient conditions (Simon, 1965; Wimsatt, 1972; Bechtel and Richards, 2010 (1993); Bechtel and Abrahamson, 2011; Mitchell, 2003, 2009; Ladyman, Lambert and Weisner, 2013, forthcoming). All these accounts map only partially onto some of the ways in which cancer scientists speak of cancer as “complex.” What to make of this situation of somewhat spotty overlap? 

The properties that various philosophers have offered up for systems to count as complex do not pick out a unified kind. That said, there are some common features, dynamics, and properties of complex systems. In my view, attention to the context specific ways in which cancer is complex (at least by the lights of cancer scientists) is enormously important for the purposes of treatment and prognosis. However, there are no clear and unambiguous examples of general patterns or processes of the sort sought in complexity science.