Abstract

In the past two or three decades, complexity not only has been a hot research topic but has caught the popular imagination. Terms such as chaos and bifurcation become so common they find their way into Hollywood movies. What is complexity? What is the theory of complexity or the science of complexity? I do not think there is such a thing as the theory of complexity. Not even a rigid definition of complexity exists in the natural sciences. There are many theories trying to address various complex systems. What I try to do is to extract some general ideas that are implicit in these theories, and more generally, in the way that scientists face and think about complicated situations.