COMPLEXITY THEORY
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 561 ▶ |
| Object type | General information, Methodology or model |
Complexity has been first considered under the following aspects:
- Organismic complexity as described by L.von BERTALANFFY in his fundational work based on biology.
- Structural complexity as for example by J. MILLER in his “Living Systems”, including the study of critical subsystems and the different levels of complexity.
- Hierarchic complexity as for example by K. BOULDING in his classification of systems, or H. SIMON in his “Architecture of complexity”
- Dynamic complexity as first considered by H. POINCARÉ in his three bodies problem, a work whose all-embracing importance was not understood until the emergence of chaos theory.
A more elaborated theory of complexity appeared in recent years, particularly through the work of St. KAUFFMAN, J. HOLLAND, C. LANGTON and others, who see, as any systemist, complexity as the result of interactions between elements, but are unraveling the ways these interactions work through the study of the behavior of networks, according to variegated individual rules.
Complexity has also been considered from a new viewpoint in thermodynamics of irreversible systems by I. PRIGOGINE and the Brussels and Austin's teams which he organized.
See also
Artificial life, Connection machine, Network behavior, Neural network