Sustainability Calling

10Principles and Practical Mechanisms of Self-Organization: in a Worldwide Cooperative Context

This chapter is just a reminder related to the complexification of systems. Indeed, this content is widely developed in a book [MAS 06] dedicated to the “Theory of Complexity in the Decision and Management Processes”. For this reason, we will just recall some basic principles to facilitate the reading of this book.

Thus, we will just detail some advances applicable to the evolution of networks which are relevant to the so-called “Network Theory”. Again, the networks are everywhere and they are growing at high speed. Since sustainability is the core of our book, we will apply these concepts to the growth of networks (a network being considered as a complex system) and their capabilities that are changing over time.

10.1. Introduction: complexity in nature

In nature, complexity is everywhere, from matter up to living species which are just an element of our ecosphere (we know that the smaller a component is, the more difficult it is to study). It is a global and universal concept that is true everywhere, for everything and since the beginning of time.

Figure 10.1. Image photographed by the Apollo 17 mission (source: NASA)

In complex system theory, we show that basic principles and underpinning evolutive mechanisms are quite diverse, they are often common to several disciplines, they ...