Approaching complexity—Start with awareness

Abstract

Health professional researchers are becoming increasingly aware that many questions are no longer satisfactorily answered by the prevailing simple cause-and-effect research models.This reductionist approach of understanding a problem by taking it apart mostly fails to explain the nature of the problem-as-a-whole.The whole is greater and different than the sum of its parts is the often-repeated catchphrase of the complexity sciences community, but in itself, it does not provide much guidance on how to study the nature and behaviour of the whole.Where and when did the importance of seeing and understanding the whole arise?The fundamental insights arose in Weimar/ Jena in the 1790s (Figure 1); Goethe's studies lead him to the belief that contrary to Descartes' views that animals are machines, living organisms consist of parts that only function as a unified whole.Alexander von Humboldt expanded Goethe's ideas to the whole of the natural world (preceding Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis by about 170 years).At the turn of the 18th century, Humboldt explored South America with this "worldview"-he meticulouslysome would argue obsessively-measured and recorded everything he observed.Most importantly, he took and recorded all his measurements in their exact context and noted that natural phenomena occurred in similar patterns in all different parts of the continent.His insights from studying nature as a whole are summarized in two now famous statements: "In this great chain of causes and effects, no single fact can be considered in isolation," and the conclusion that "[perceiving nature] as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious [as] everything hangs together [emphasis COMPLEX (ADAPTIVE) SYSTEMS?"Everything hangs together" defines complexity; the Latin word complexus literally means interwoven-studying complex problems thus is the study of interconnectedness and interdependence. 2 This notion is reflected in the definition of a complex (adaptive) system: A complex (adaptive) system is "a whole consisting of two or more parts (a) each of which can affect the performance or properties of the whole, (b) none of which can have an independent effect on the whole, and (c) no subgroup of which can have an independent effect on the whole." 3

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