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Raphael's Heliodorus

( Size: 100cm x 80cm Acrylic and collage on canvas )

Raphael's Heliodorus

Leila Kubba Kawash 1997.

Complexity comment:

Long before the invention of written languages the epic tale encapsulated the path of society through the muddy waters of potentiality. These adventures of past heros and men served to give a bedrock to the lives of those living, a direction and framework for their lives. Such inspirations, often immortalized later in painting, in drama, in poetry, are enablers widening the context of our lives in such a way as to make possible what was previously unthinkable. They prepare us for new experiences, give us hopes and aspirations, provide a sense of belonging and worth.

In the same way complexity thought helps to open up the world of choice, to identify that the hidden landscape of possibility (which we call phase or state space) is so much vaster that even the most imaginative thinkers have conceived. It is generally thought the universe has existed for some 15 billion years, yet even in terms of this prodigious timescale we (life as a whole) have explored such a negligible number of the available choices that the ratio of unexplored to explored options would exhaust the numerical capacity of the largest computer. Paraphrasing the words of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: "Phase Space is big. Really big. You won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it really is".

And complexity theory is going to set you loose in all of it...

Page Version 1.0 June 1999
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