A Concept of Complexity for the Social Sciences Revue Internationale de Systémique, 12 (3) 1998: 285-312.
Abstract
While most approaches to the idea of complexity attempt to handle this
concept as an inherent property of the system under observation, this article
considers complexity to be a property of the relationship between a system
and its observer. It is argued that the concept of complexity must be used
to measure the reliability an individual attaches to the classification model
that he or she adopted in order to extract 'events' from empirical experiences.
Complexity cannot be defined without previously modelling the individual's
cognitive processes. By assuming a knowledge of the mental categories by
which an individual perceives reality, a quantitative measure of complexity
is defined, and it is shown that its numerical value can be used to evaluate
alternative patterns of behaviour.
In particular, complexity is able to
account for features of decision-making in situations where empirical reality
continuously generates facts of a novel kind, as is usual in the social sciences. Finally, a comparison is drawn with theories of complexity used in physics,
computer science and biology. Although most of these theories handle complexity
as an inherent property of the system under observation, it is argued that
they can be considered as approximations of the concept of complexity presented
here.