ABSTRACT

Complex systems are only partly knowable; the knowledge of their microand macro-level properties is only partly generalizable, and their future behaviors are predictable only partly. As Capra (1996) observes, in general systems thinking, approximate knowledge replaces the notion of certainty, defi nitiveness, and completeness in knowledge (p. 41); this is true for complexity theory as well. The methods of inquiry that complexity researchers use fi t this understanding of complex systems.