Complex Systems II

 "[…] as a model of a complex system becomes more complete, it becomes less understandable. Alternatively, as a model grows more realistic, it also becomes just as difficult to understand as the real world processes it represents." (Jay M Dutton & William H Starbuck," Computer simulation models of human behavior: A history of an intellectual technology", IEEE Transactions on Systems, 1971)

"As the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise and yet significant statements about its behavior diminishes until a threshold is reached beyond which precision and significance (or relevance) become almost mutually exclusive characteristics." (Lotfi A Zadeh, 1973)

"Any system that insulates itself from diversity in the environment tends to atrophy and lose its complexity and distinctive nature." (Gareth Morgan, "Images of Organization", 1986)

"If we want to solve problems effectively [...] we must keep in mind not only many features but also the influences among them. Complexity is the label we will give to the existence of many interdependent variables in a given system. The more variables and the greater their interdependence, the greater the system's complexity. Great complexity places high demands on a planner's capacity to gather information, integrate findings, and design effective actions. The links between the variables oblige us to attend to a great many features simultaneously, and that, concomitantly, makes it impossible for us to undertake only one action in a complex system." (Dietrich Dorner, "The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations", 1989)

"Because the individual parts of a complex adaptive system are continually revising their ('conditioned') rules for interaction, each part is embedded in perpetually novel surroundings (the changing behavior of the other parts). As a result, the aggregate behavior of the system is usually far from optimal, if indeed optimality can even be defined for the system as a whole. For this reason, standard theories in physics, economics, and elsewhere, are of little help because they concentrate on optimal end-points, whereas complex adaptive systems 'never get there'. They continue to evolve, and they steadily exhibit new forms of emergent behavior." (John H Holland, "Complex Adaptive Systems", Daedalus Vol. 121 (1), 1992)

"The impossibility of constructing a complete, accurate quantitative description of a complex system forces observers to pick which aspects of the system they most wish to understand." (Thomas Levenson, "Measure for Measure: A musical history of science", 1994)

"Artificial complex systems will be deliberately infused with organic principles simply to keep them going." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"Complex adaptive systems have the property that if you run them - by just letting the mathematical variable of 'time' go forward - they'll naturally progress from chaotic, disorganized, undifferentiated, independent states to organized, highly differentiated, and highly interdependent states. Organized structures emerge spontaneously. [...]A weak system gives rise only to simpler forms of self-organization; a strong one gives rise to more complex forms, like life. (J Doyne Farmer, "The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution", 1995)