Complex Interventions

Our world is inherently complex. Whether it is biology, physics, or social science, it is impossible to draw definitive and complete descriptions of even seemingly simple systems. Be it a single-celled organism, a collection of gas molecules, or a small group of people, incontrovertibly causal pictures often elude us. Science frequently attempts to learn the behaviors and properties of systems that do not entirely depend on a full understanding of all of the details. The fields of complexity theory and complex systems science are not new. They attempt to understand the relationships and interactions between various components of systems, with the awareness that systems are adaptive and dynamically changing, whose emergent properties and behaviors are unpredictable, multi-dimensional, and non-linear. The study of complex systems involves an amalgamation of concepts, theories and methods spanning multiple disciplines where emergent behaviors of the system as a whole can often be very different from those of its parts.