A Quick Note on Complex Adaptive Systems
In yesterday’s post on “systemness” I claimed that “the 12 principles of systems science identified by Mobus and Kalton apply to all systems.”
A reader emailed me to point out that this is not exactly true. He said that principles 6-10 “apply only to living things and some of the artificial systems that living things create.”
This is an important point that is highlighted in the Principles of Systems Science textbook.
In my effort to be concise I made a gross oversimplification!
Simple systems, like hammers, don’t really store knowledge, evolve, or have governance subsystems. Complex adaptive systems like the human brain, governments, and corporations do.
I won’t be discussing complexity and complex adaptive systems in-depth for a few weeks. If you’d like to learn more about these topics I’d highly recommend Jane Gatsby’s Wonderland series and Joe Norman’s Applied Complexity newsletter.