Chapter 1: Perplexity of Complexity
In his highly influential paper “From Complexity to Perplexity”, J. Horgan [Horgan, 1995] addressed the question whether science can achieve a unified theory of complex systems.
Systems composed of many components interacting with each other are considered complex since their behavior may not be expressed as a direct sum of individual behaviors of their parts. More complex systems naturally involve more parts and potentially integrate more diverse interactions between their components compared to simpler ones. Envisioning complex systems is an observer dependent practice [Johnson, 2014], since a knowledge of more detailed characteristics can make a system appear more complex.