.....I believe there is a general law: complexity tends to increase as functions and modifications are added to a system to break through limitations, handle exceptional circumstances or adapt to a world itself more complex. This applies, if you think about it, not just to technologies and biological organisms but also to legal systems, tax codes, scientific theories, even successive releases of software programs. Where forces exist to weed out useless functions, increasing complexity delivers a smooth, efficient machine. Where they do not, it merely encumbers.
But, interestingly, even when a system gets lumbered down with complications, there is hope. Sooner or late a new simplifying conception is discovered that cuts at the root idea behind the old system and replaces it. Copernicus's dazzlingly simple astronomical system, based on a heliocentric universe, replaced the hopelessly complicated Ptolemaic system. Whittle's jet engine, ironically, replaced the incurably complicated piston aeroengine of the 1930s before it also became complex. And so growing complexity is often followed by renewed simplicity in a slow back-and-forth dance, with complications usually gaining a net edge over time.
The writer Peter Matthiessen once said, "The secret of well-being is simplicity." True. Yet the secret of evolution is the continual emergence of complexity. Simplicity brings a spareness, a grit; it cuts the fat. Yet complexity makes organisms like us possible in the first place. Complexity is indeed a marvel when it evolves naturally and delivers powerful performance. But when we seek it as an end or allow it to go unchecked, it merely hampers. It is then that we need to discover the new modes, the bold strokes, that bring fresh simplicity to our organizations, our technology, our government, our lives.
W. Brian Arthur
Scientific American May 1993
Page. 144