ABSTRACT
Economic phenomena are complex social phenomena. In today’s intellectual milieu, this is hardly a novel statement. Dynamic and complex systems theories are now part of the intellectual landscape of the contemporary natural and social sciences. In economics, the mathematics of complex, dynamic systems modeling is now being developed for application to the problems of economic growth, increasing returns, and general equilibrium. Rather than exploring contemporary research in complexity in economics and some of the natural sciences in great detail, in this chapter the focus of attention will be on general aspects of a theory of complexity.2 An account of complexity is provided which is broad enough to serve as a background for an exploration of various approaches and contributions to complexity theory in both the natural and social sciences.3 In the paragraphs which follow, the contributions of three mostly compatible conceptions of complexity will be explored. The ideas of natural scientists Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine will be presented first, followed by an overview of F.A.Hayek’s theory of complexity, and the ideas of those at the Sante Fe Institute will be presented last.
