Chapter 2 Chapter 1 The Heroes of the Irish Idea

Brian Arthur sat alone at a table by the hotel bar, gazing out the front window, trying not to pay attention to the young office workers who were pouring into the hotel to start enjoying their blissful moments early.Outside the window, in the concrete canyons of the Financial District, typical San Francisco fog is turning into typical San Francisco drizzle.This suits his mood right now.On the late afternoon of March 17, 1987, he was not in the mood to admire the copper fixtures, ferns, and stained glass, nor was he in the mood to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, nor Emotions booze with pretend Irishmen in pinstripes and green trimmings.In his disheartened resentment, all he wanted was to drink beer in silence.Stanford University professor William Bryan Arthur, the son of a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, was feeling down.

And the day started so beautifully. This is where all the irony comes from.When he set out for Berkeley that morning, he had expected the trip to be a triumphant reunion: Well done to the Berkeley lads.He really misses his time in Berkeley in the early seventies.Berkeley, which is located on the hillside north of Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco, is a place full of enterprising spirit and vitality. Thought.He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.There he met and married the tall, blond Susan Peterson, a PhD student in statistics; he also spent his first year as a postdoc in Berkeley's economics department.In his relationship, of all the places he has lived and worked, only Berkeley is his home.

Well, now he's going home, sort of like that.It's not important in itself, it's just a lunch with the dean of the economics department at Berkeley University and some professors in the department who have taught him before.However, this trip will be the first time he has returned to Berkeley's economics department in many years, and certainly the first time he feels that he can be on an equal footing with his teachers academically.He has amassed twelve years of experience working around the world and is a scholar with a strong reputation mainly on fertility rates in third world countries.He returned to his alma mater this time as a professor of economics at Stanford University—a position rarely granted to anyone under the age of fifty.And he returned with honor at the age of forty-one.And who knows?Maybe someone in Berkeley would talk about bringing him back to work.

Yes, he really thought of himself that morning.Why did he not follow the mainstream of economics a few years ago, but try to conceive a new exploration of economics?Why, instead of fighting the sure fights, did he get involved in those vague, semi-imaginative scientific revolutions? Just because he couldn't get those thoughts out of his head, that's the only reason.Because he can't see its presence everywhere.In most cases, however, scientists themselves seem to be completely unaware of this.But after spending three hundred years dismantling everything into molecules, atoms, nucleons, and quarks, they finally seem to be starting to turn the process upside down.They began to study how these things came together to form a complex whole, rather than dismantling them into the simplest possible things to analyze.

He could see this happening in biology.Biologists have spent nearly two decades unraveling the molecular mechanisms of DNA, as well as those of proteins and other elements in cells.Now they've begun to explore a fundamental mystery: How do trillions of these molecules assemble themselves into a whole that can move, feed back and reproduce?That is, what about a living object? He could see this happening in the field of brain science research.Neuroscientists, psychologists, computer experts, and artificial intelligence researchers are struggling to understand the nature of the mind: how the billions of densely interconnected nerve cells in our skulls give rise to feelings, thoughts, purposes, and emotions. Conscious?

He could even see this happening in physics as well: Physicists are trying to build a mathematical theory of chaos, the complex beauty of myriad fragments, and the eerie motion inside solids and liquids.Herein lies a profound mystery: Why do simple particles governed by simple laws sometimes behave in astonishing and utterly unpredictable ways?Why do simple particles automatically organize themselves into complex structures like stars, galaxies, snowflakes, hurricanes—as if obeying a hidden yearning for organization and order? The signs are everywhere.Arthur was not quite able to express this feeling in words.As far as he knows, no one has been able to make it clear so far.But somehow, he could feel that these problems were actually the same kind of problem.The old scientific classifications are beginning to disintegrate, and a new, integrated science is waiting to be born.Arthur believed that it would be a rigorous science, as "solid" as physics had always been, based entirely on the laws of nature.But this science will not be a search for the most elementary particles, but a search for circulation, change, and the formation and dissolution of patterns.This science will probe into the individuality of things and the contingencies of history, instead of ignoring the out-of-whole and unpredictable.It's not a science of simplicity, it's a science of, well, complexity.

This is where Arthur's new view of economics comes in.The conventional economics he was taught in school was a world away from this complex perspective.Theoretical economists talk endlessly about market stability and the equilibrium of supply and demand, expressing this concept in mathematical equations and proving its theorems.They made the tenets of Adam Smith the foundation of economics as much as they believed in the state religion.But when they're confronted with instability and change in the economy -- well, the very thought itself bothers them enough to avoid it. But Arthur has come to face up to this economic instability.Look out the window, he told his colleagues.Whether you like it or not, markets are volatile, the world is volatile, full of evolution, turmoil, and surprises.Economics must take these upheavals into account.Now, he believes he has discovered a way to make economics do just that, using a principle called "increasing returns," or, in a translation of King James's, "the owner is given." (TO them that thathath shall be given) to express.Why are high-tech companies flocking to Silicon Valley near Stanford instead of Ann Arbor or Berkeley?Because many old high-tech companies are already located there.That is, the owner gets.Why did VHS video recording systems dominate the market, even though Beta was technically better than it?Because some people happened to buy the VHS system earlier, that led to more VHS tapes in video stores, which in turn led to more people buying VHS players, and so on.The owner gets.

The list goes on.Arthur was convinced that the rate of increasing returns pointed to the future direction of economics.In the future of economics, he and his colleagues in economics will work with physicists and biologists to understand this messy, chaotic, spontaneously organized world.He was convinced that the rate of increasing returns would be the basis for a new and very different kind of economics. But unfortunately, he had bad luck convincing others of his increasing returns.Outside his circle at Stanford, most economists found his ideas quaint.The editors of professional economics journals told him that his discussion of increasing returns "is not economics."At the symposium, many audience members were very angry: How dare you say that the economy is not balanced!These violent attacks made Arthur deeply frustrated.He obviously needs allies, people who can open their minds and listen to him.This wish, along with all his desire to go home, was the reason for his return to Berkeley.

So they all sat in the department club and ate sandwiches.Tom Rothenberg, one of his professors, couldn't help asking him questions like, "Tell me, Brian, what have you been working on?" "Rate of increasing returns. ' Arthur gave him a curt answer to begin the subject.Al Fishlow, the head of the economics department, looked at him blankly. "But as far as we know, increasing returns don't exist." "And, even if it existed, we would have to declare it illegal." Rosenberg snatched it up with a grin. Then they all laughed, not maliciously, but just as a joke among themselves.It's just a trivial thing.But somehow the laughter totally shattered Arthur's vain expectations.He sat there dumbfounded by the blow.These are the two economists he respects most, but they don't listen to him at all.Arthur suddenly felt naive and stupid, like a chick who believes in increasing returns because he doesn't know much.A trip to Berkeley dashed his last hopes.

During the rest of the lunch, he hardly noticed anything else.When lunch was over and everyone said goodbye politely, he got into his old luxury car and drove back to San Francisco via the Bay Bridge.He took the first exit, headed for the Embarcadero, and stopped in front of the first hotel he saw.He entered the hotel, surrounded by ferns, and began to seriously consider whether to abandon economics altogether. When he was almost down his second glass of beer, he found that the hotel had started to get very noisy.Those yuppies are coming here to celebrate the festival of Ireland's Patron Saint.Well, maybe it's time to go home.Sitting here will certainly not lead to any results.So he got up, walked out the door, and got into his car.The drizzle was still falling.

His home in Perrault Alto was a suburban tenement near Stanford, thirty-five miles south of San Francisco.It was sunset when he finally pulled into the driveway in front of his house.He must have made some noise, and his wife, Susan, opened the front door and watched him across the lawn: a lanky, prematurely graying man who looked disheveled and terribly tired, as he was now. Mood. "Hey, how was the trip to Berkeley? Did they like your idea?" she asked from the doorway. "Damn it. No one believes in increasing returns," Arthur replied. Susan Arthur had seen her husband lose academic battles before. "Well, I guess it wouldn't be a revolution if everyone believed it in the first place, would it?" she said, trying to find comforting words. Arthur looked at her, speechless for the second time that day.Immediately he couldn't help laughing out loud.