ABSTRACT
This chapter has the goal of clarifying a misunderstanding that often affects the debate about how to handle, in scientiÞc terms, the challenge implied by sustainable development. The misunderstanding is generated by confusion between the adjectives
complicated
and
complex
. Complicatedness is associated with the nature and degree of formalization obtained in the step of representation (the degree of syntactic entailments implied by the model). That is,
complicated
is an adjective that refers to models and not to natural systems. Making a model more complicated does not help when dealing with complexity. Complexity means that the set of relations that can be found when dealing with the representation of a shared perception is virtually inÞnite, open and expanding. That is,
complex
is an adjective that refers to the characteristics of a process of observation. Therefore, it requires addressing the characteristics of a complex observer–observed that is operating within a given context. Dealing with complexity implies acknowledging the distinction between perception and representation, that is, the need to consider not only the characteristics of the observed, but also the characteristics of the observer. Scientists are always inside any picture of the observer–observed complex and never acting from the outside. In scientiÞc terms, this implies (1) addressing the semantic dimension of our choices about how to perceive the reality in relation to goals and scales; (2) acknowledging the existence of nonequivalent observers who are operating in different points in space and time (on different scales), using different detectors and different models and pursuing independent local goals; and (3) acknowledging that any representation of the reality on a given scale reßects just one of the possible shared perceptions found in the population of interacting nonequivalent observers. To make things more difÞcult, both observed systems and the observers are becoming in time, but at different paces.
