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Structure of Complex Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

R. J. Nelson
R. J. Nelson*
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University
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Extract

The area of fuzzy complex systems is a good one for analytic philosophers to keep out of. If analysis is a way of getting straight on ideas or terms which enjoy wide philosophic and scientific currency and which have fairly well-fixed meanings awaiting illumination, then complex systems is no field for analysis. I have tried it; others have tried it; and it seems to me that the attempts amount to very little. Perhaps Professor Forrester and his MIT colleagues would say that positive feedback is at work. Just as expanded, low cost housing aggravates the housing situation in large cities, so attempts to shed philosophy's light on very large scale systems, fuzzy or not, brings darkness ([3], pp. 65ff.).

There appear to be two types of systems concept that are bothersome, one benign and the other not.

Type
Part IX. Complex Fuzzy Systems
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 523 - 542
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Supported in part by the Rockefeller Foundation.

References

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