SIMPLICITY (Organized)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 3045 ▶ |
| Object type | General information |
The character of the deterministic motion of a single, or two interacting moving elements, or more generally of the interplay of two or three variables at most.
W. WEAVER (1948) coined three expressions to differentiate simplicity and complexity:
- Organized simplicity, simple, deterministic;
- Disorganized complexity, complex, random;
- Organized complexity, self-organizing, ergodic, chaotic.
Classical science, until the last decades of the 19th Century, based on deterministic models, discovered and explored organized simplicity, as for example in mechanics, optics or acoustics.
Disorganized complexity was then tackled by the newly introduced statistical methods, as for example in thermodynamics.
Organized complexity became under investigation only in the 20th Century and its study is still in full development.