Qualitative Understanding Of Complex Systems

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QUOCS.  Note 1

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"If it quocs like a duck ..."

Matthew,

The problems of how human beings can reach a qualitative understanding
of complex dynamic systems, whether artificial, engineered, intelligent,
natural, organizational, or physical, has been been on the minds of many
applied mathematicians, control systems engineers, and operations research
workers for quite a few years now, as I'm sure you know, and these are also
some of the questions that have occupied me for about a decade now.  Recent
discussions in this forum tell me that a few of us may not wholly appreciate
the extent to which the things that we can learn from the study of particular,
well-chosen, and hopefully intelligent control systems might be generalized to
apply to many other systems at the same level of complexity.  So I will insert
this peg in e-space on which to hang some thoughts about the more generalizable
aspects of the Lifecycle Integration Schema and other schemata of that same ilk.

Jon Awbrey

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