From Complexity in the Natural Sciences to Complexity in Operations Management Systems
by Jean-Pierre Briffaut
Preface
The word “complex” is used in many contexts, be it at the level of social sciences, biology, chemistry and physics or in our professional and private environments. Any time we cannot understand a situation, we try to escape the challenge of feeling doubt and uncertainty, because we have the impression that we lack methods and techniques (in one word, capabilities) to address the issues involved. Within this framework, we decide to give up and convince ourselves that we are right to do so because we are overwhelmed by “complexity”. Complexity is an idea, fabric of our daily experience.
When a phenomenon seems simple to us, it is because we perceive that one object and one action are involved in spite of the fact that reality may be much more intricate. This simplification is enough for making us “cognize” the ins and outs of the situation we experience. In contrast, when a great number of interacting elements are involved, we perceive the situation as complex.
Economic systems and human relationships are complex. Macroscopic situations may appear “simple” because the microscopic underlying states are hidden. We perceive “averages” without knowing the detailed states of the components of a whole.
During the second half of the 20th Century, developments in the thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes, the theory of dynamical systems and classical mechanics have converged to show that the chasm between simple and complex, order and disorder, is much more reduced than ...