Abstract
A number of proposals have been advanced in recent years for the development of “general systems theory” which, abstracting from properties peculiar to physical, biological, or social systems, would be applicable to all of them. We might well feel that, while the goal is laudable, systems of such diverse kinds could hardly be expected to have any nontrivial properties in common. Metaphor and analogy can be helpful, or they can be misleading. All depends on whether the similarities the metaphor captures are significant or superficial.
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Simon, H.A. (1991). The Architecture of Complexity. In: Facets of Systems Science. International Federation for Systems Research International Series on Systems Science and Engineering, vol 7. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0718-9_31
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0718-9_31
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-0720-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-0718-9
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