Quotes About Complex Systems

#1. All complex systems are hierarchical in nature, but also exhibit other patterns of regularity.

Anonymous

#2. Attempts to control complex systems by using the kind of mechanical, reductionist thinking championed by thinkers from Newton to Taylor - breaking everything down into component parts, or optimizing individual elements - tend to be pointless at best or destructive at worst.

Stanley McChrystal

#3. The people working in my field also are quite skeptical of our ability to do this. It ultimately boils down to the problem of building complex systems that are reliable and that work, and that problem has long predated the problem of access to encryption keys.

Matt Blaze

#4. The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.

Niklaus Wirth

#5. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

Jurgen Habermas

#6. Complex systems are full of interdependencies - hard to detect - and nonlinear responses.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#7. I believe the evidence strongly supports common descent. But the root question remains unanswered: What has caused complex systems to form?

Michael Behe

#8. When discussing complex systems like brains and other societies, it is easy to oversimplify: I call this Occam's lobotomy.

I. J. Good

#9. Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways.

Stephen Jay Gould

#10. Complexity is not a goal. I don't want to be remembered as an engineer of complex systems.

David Parnas

#11. Because of feedback delays within complex systems, by the time a problem becomes apparent it may be unnecessarily difficult to solve. - A stitch in time saves nine.

Donella H. Meadows

#12. If you take a more Darwinian point of view the dynamics of the universe are such that as the universe evolved in time, complex systems arose out of the natural dynamics of the universe.

Seth Lloyd

#13. First rule of complex systems," I said. "You can't tell friends from enemies.

Alastair Reynolds

#14. We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

Roger Penrose

#15. human beings fail the way all complex systems fail: randomly and gradually.

Atul Gawande

#16. The mind controls so much of the body. We are much more than flesh and blood; we are complex systems. Patients do better when they have faith that they're going to do better. That's why I always tell my patients and their families not to neglect their prayers. There's nobody I don't say that to.

Ben Carson

#17. As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

Noam Chomsky

#18. Computer science doesn't know how to build complex systems that work reliably. This has been a well-understood problem since the very beginning of programmable computers.

Matt Blaze

#19. In journalism, especially, we tend to deal with large, complex systems by finding especially interesting people and story lines to focus on.

Nicholas Lemann

#20. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.

Michael Crichton

#21. Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes ... Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. - RUSSELL ACKOFF,

Donella H. Meadows

#22. [ ... ] most of the problems faced by humankind concerns [concerned] our inability to grasp and manage the increasingly complex systems of our world.

Peter M. Senge

#23. What is important is that complex systems, richly cross-connected internally, have complex behaviours, and that these behaviours can be goal-seeking in complex patterns.

William Ross Ashby

#24. As we build systems that are more and more complex, we make more and more subtle but very high-impact mistakes. As we use computers for more things and as we build more complex systems, this problem of unreliability and insecurity is actually getting worse, with no real sign of abating anytime soon.

Matt Blaze

#25. The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.

Charles C. Mann

#26. If there's one thing government needs desperately, it's the ability to quickly try something, pivot when necessary, and build complex systems by starting with simple systems that work and evolving from there, not the other way around.

Jennifer Pahlka

#27. But sequence comparisons simply can't account for the development of complex biochemical systems any more than Darwin's comparison of simple and complex eyes told him how vision worked.

Michael Behe

#28. A complex system, contrary to what people believe, does not require complicated systems and regulations and intricate policies.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#29. As the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.

Michael Behe

#30. Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation.

Phillip E. Johnson

#31. The task of teaching has never been more complex and the expectations that burden teachers are carried out in antiquated systems that offer little support - and yet, teachers are finding success every day.

Tucker Elliot

#32. A terrific, stimulating book ... Ramalingam clearly and engagingly shows how the use of complex adaptive systems thinking can significantly strengthen and enhance the impacts and effectiveness of global foreign aid.

Jerry Sabloff

#33. Volition ... takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.

William James

#34. The planet isn't improvising, it's creating dynamic tensions between complex living systems in a planetary choreography, a balancing act between physical, chemical, biological, environmental, and human components.

DJ Spooky

#35. animals with more mental flexibility typically possess more complex sensory and nervous systems, suggesting that they are the most likely to have the neural hardware that underlies suffering.

Virginia Morell

#36. The only way to know how a complex system will behave-after you modify it-is to modify it and see how it behaves.

George E.P. Box

#37. Space architectures capable of supporting a permanent human presence on Mars are extraordinarily complex, with many different interdependent systems.

Buzz Aldrin

#38. When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.

Albert Einstein

#39. Technology has moved away from sharing and toward ownership. This suits software and hardware companies just fine: They create new, bloated programs that require more disk space and processing power. We buy bigger, faster computers, which then require more complex operating systems, and so on.

Douglas Rushkoff

#40. Our technologies become more complex while we become more simple. They learn about us while we come to know less and less about them. No one person can understand everything going on in an iPhone, much less pervasive systems.

Douglas Rushkoff

#41. China's censorship and propaganda systems may be complex and multilayered, but they are obviously not well coordinated.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#42. One of the great enemies of design is when systems or objects become more complex than a person - or even a team of people - can keep in their heads. This is why software is generally beneath contempt.

Bran Ferren

#43. Don't be fooled by the many books on complexity or by the many complex and arcane algorithms you find in this book or elsewhere. Although there are no textbooks on simplicity, simple systems work and complex don't.

Jim Gray

#44. In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages.

Guido Van Rossum

#45. I'll tell you what it means, these orbiting sensors that can hear us in our beds. It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less conviction in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.

Don DeLillo

#46. Although science is not easy in complex human systems, we cannot afford to throw our hands in the air and give up. It may take decades, but it is a game worth playing and winning.

Paul Gibbons

#47. We have been quick to assume rights to use water but slow to recognize obligations to preserve and protect it ... In short, we need a water ethic-a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand.

Sandra Postel

#48. You can find academic and industrial groups doing some relevant work, but there isn't a focus on building complex molecular systems. In that respect, Japan is first, Europe is second, and we're third.

K. Eric Drexler

#49. Systems that are too complex to understand kill organizational productivity and the ease with which you can add engineers or add functionality to your system.

Martin L. Abbott

#50. This use of building blocks to generate internal models is a pervasive feature of complex adaptive systems.

John Henry Holland

#51. Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It's now become a very broad theory that's been used to study everything from the stock market to heart rhythms. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability.

Michael Crichton

#52. As biologists, we contemplate with admiration and awe the wondrous array of sophisticated cell interactions and recognitions evolved in the T cell immune system, which must be a model for other similarly complex biological systems of highly differentiated organisms.

Baruj Benacerraf

#53. Systems are complex, so controlling an attack and achieving a desired level of damage may be harder than using physical weapons.

Dorothy Denning

#54. With increasing fervor since the 1980s, sustainability has been the watchword of scientists, environmental activists, and indeed all those concerned about the complex, fragile systems on the sphere we inhabit. It has shaped debates about business, design, and our lifestyles.

Jamais Cascio

#55. My belief, for what it is worth, is that city dwellers cannot understand the world. Insulated from reality by complex and expert systems of provision and police, baffled by fashion and spectacle, city dwellers can distinguish neither the sources of their existence nor the consequences.

James Buchan

#56. It is always easier to destroy a complex system than to selectively alter it.

Roby James

#57. We deceive ourselves if we believe we can hold on to old models as ideologies whimper off to a shallow grave in prolonged agony of people, institutions and cultures.

Said Elias Dawlabani

#58. The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have not legitimacy.

Albert Einstein

#59. The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.

Kevin Kelly

#60. Poison is a glyph for magical power itself: complex, concentrated, liberated in the hands of the elect, and disastrous in the hands of the fool. Its very nature is transmutative, changing all it touches, the maker and breaker of laws, policies, and epidemiological systems.

Daniel A. Schulke

#61. There is no evidence that dogs have the kind of complex emotional lives and value systems that we do. It's one reason why we love them so much, in fact. They are neither "good" nor "bad." They don't hold grudges, act in petty ways, or seek revenge. They read our moods, but not our minds.

Jon Katz

#62. I never claimed to be a computer engineer, but I did train as an industrial designer, and I am a consumer marketer, and I am very comfortable dealing with complex businesses and complexity in general and simplifying it - basically a systems designer.

John Sculley

#63. Government systems suffer from two weaknesses. They are complex. And they are slow. We need to change this. Our systems need to be made sharp, effective, fast and flexible. This requires simplification of processes and having trust in citizens. This needs a Policy Driven State.

Narendra Modi

#64. Technologies that exist between man and nature in a simple form and those that enable the interaction with other technologies are becoming significantly more complex and create their own information systems.

Hubert Burda

#65. Chaos has come to be associated with the study of anything complex, but, in fact, the mathematical techniques are directly applicable only to simple systems that appear to be complex.

Neil Gershenfeld

#66. Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable.

Howard Pattee

#67. Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.

Kenneth E. Boulding

#68. Animals of the land environment are dominated by species with the most complex social systems.

Edward O. Wilson