I actually enjoy complexity that's empowering. If it challenges me, the complexity is very pleasant. ~Ward CunninghamTheworld is complex. That complexity isbeautiful. I love trying tounderstand how thingswork. But that's because there's something to belearned from mastering that complexity. ~Ward Cunningham.
Complexity is a term generally used to indicate a quality where many aspects or parts of specific entities or systems interact or form patterns with each other in varying ways. Observing and assessing these patterns of relationships are the focus of diverse scientific and mathematical studies ofcomplex systems.
Thetheory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining theexistence of organized complexity. ~Richard Dawkins.I think the next [21st] century will be the century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws] that governmatter and understand all the normal situations. We don’t know how the laws fit together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I expect we will find a completeunified theory sometime this century. There is no limit to the complexity that we can build using those basic laws. ~Stephen HawkingThe most extensivecomputation known has been conducted over the last billion years on aplanet-wide scale: it is theevolution of life. Thepower of this computation is illustrated by the complexity andbeauty of its crowning achievement, thehuman brain. ~David Roger.You can't proveRembrandt is better thanNorman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at eitherpainter's work. Taste is ablood sport. ~Jerry Saltz.Complexity is theprodigy of theworld.Simplicity is thesensation of theuniverse. Behind complexity, there is always simplicity to be revealed. Inside simplicity, there is always complexity to bediscovered. ~ Gang Yu
The recognition of the importance of complex systems in physics and biology has led to their study in economic systems, usually characterized as governed by a large set of interacting nonlinear dynamic systems. It is clear that these phenomena are observable and are not necessarily inconsistent with standard economic reasoning. Professor Rosser has collected a large number of papers, some from not-easily-accessible sources, which show the application of complex system theory to a variety of economic phenomena. This collection will be invaluable to the development of new and necessary thinking in economics.
Complexity theory is really a movement of thesciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking. The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements?Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hit some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty.
Let us keep the discoveries and indisputablemeasurements ofphysics. But … A more complete study of the movements of theworld will oblige us, little by little, to turn it upside down; in other words, to discover that if things hold and hold together, it is only by reason of complexity, from above.
[W]henGalileo discovered he could use the tools ofmathematics andmechanics to understand the motion ofcelestial bodies, he felt, in the words of one imminent researcher, that he had learned thelanguage in whichGod recreated theuniverse. Today we are learning the language in which God createdlife. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, thebeauty, the wonder of God's mostdivine andsacred gift.
I actually enjoy complexity that's empowering. If it challenges me, the complexity is very pleasant. But sometimes I must deal with complexity that's disempowering. The effort I invest to understand that complexity is tedious work. It doesn't add anything to my abilities.
The complexity that we despise is the complexity that leads to difficulty. It isn't the complexity that raises problems. There is a lot of complexity in the world.The world is complex. That complexity is beautiful. I love trying to understand how things work. But that's because there's something to be learned from mastering that complexity.
Ward Cunningham, in "The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work : A Conversation with Ward Cunningham" Part V (19 January 2004)
Thetheory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining theexistence of organized complexity.
But considering that I walked in expecting no complexity at all, let alone the visual wonderments, 'Snow White and the Huntsman' is a considerableexperience.
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in everynation, bychildren beingtaughtmathematical concepts… A graphic representation ofdata abstracted from banks of everycomputer in thehumansystem.Unthinkable complexity. Lines oflight ranged in the nonspace of themind, clusters and constellations of data. Likecity lights, receding…
The most commonhuman act that writing a novel resembles is lying.The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length. If not for our excessivevanity and our over-activeimaginations, novelists might be unusually difficult todeceive.
We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results ofevolutionaryprinciples that yearn to produce acreature capable of understanding themode of its own necessary construction.
I think the next [21st] century will be the century of complexity. We have already discovered the basic laws that governmatter and understand all the normal situations. We don’t know how the laws fit together, and what happens under extreme conditions. But I expect we will find a completeunified theory sometime this century. There is no limit to the complexity that we can build using those basic laws.
Stephen W. Hawking, in answer to a question: Some say that while the twentieth century was the century of physics, we are now entering the century of biology. What do you think of this? Quoted inGoverning Quotes (3 quotes)
I would not give a fig for thesimplicity this side of complexity, but I would give mylife for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
It’s incredible how many years I wasted associating complexity andambiguity withintelligence. Turns out the right answer is usually pretty simple, and complexity and ambiguity are how terrible people live with themselves.
As with realreading, the ability to comprehendsubtlety and complexity comes only withtime and a lot ofexperience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills, moving out into the realworld of real people can actually become quitescary.
It doesn't matter how much you want. What really matters is how much you want it. The extent and complexity of the problem does not matter was much as does the willingness to solve it.
No matter what field aleader is in, he will faceproblems. They are inevitable for threereasons; first, we live in aworld of growing complexity anddiversity; second, we interact withpeople; and third, we cannotcontrol all the situation we face.
I don't think there was a thunderclap or adivine spark that suddenly made onespeciessmart. You can see, in ourancestors, there was a gradualexpansion of thebrain; there was an expansion of the complexity oftools.
The most extensivecomputation known has been conducted over the last billion years on aplanet-wide scale: it is theevolution of life. Thepower of this computation is illustrated by the complexity andbeauty of its crowning achievement, thehuman brain.
Complexity has the propensity to overload systems, making the relevance of a particular piece of information not statistically significant. And when an array of mind-numbing factors is added into the equation, theory and models rarely conform to reality.
L.K. Samuels,In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action by L.K. Samuels, Cobden Press, (2013) p. 28.
The inherent nature of complexity is to doubt certainty and any pretense to finite and flawless data. Put another way, under uncertainty principles, any attempt by political systems to ‘impose order’ has an equal chance to instead ‘impose disorder.’
L.K. Samuels,In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, Cobden Press (2013) p. 227.
You can't proveRembrandt is better thanNorman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretlyconservative, and hadn't really looked at eitherpainter's work.Taste is ablood sport.
Thenorthern ocean isbeautiful, … and beautiful thedelicate intricacy of thesnowflake before it melts and perishes, but such beauties are as nothing to him who delights in numbers, spurning alike the wildirrationality of life and baffling complexity ofnature’s laws.
Complexity is theprodigy of theworld.Simplicity is thesensation of theuniverse. Behind complexity, there is always simplicity to be revealed. Inside simplicity, there is always complexity to bediscovered
