Science is about finding order in the panorama of the world and embracing a
perspective that includes the falling of apples and the motion of planets; the behavior of
the individual and the actions of groups, large and small; the information content of an
encyclopedia and the Wikipedia; in short, science does not, and should not, have any
boundaries with regard to content. The terrestrial and the cosmic are part of the give
and take in science, with the goal of uncovering the principles and laws that determine
how the universe functions, along with the individuals within it. For most people,
science appears to be separate and apart from the world in which they live. The
principles and laws of science do not seem to apply to the general interactions among
people; due, in part, to the fact that principles have not been found for everyday
decision making; laws have been notoriously absent from mundane thinking; rules have
been sought in vain in the growth of society; and indeed canons go begging in the
multiple complex phenomena within the human sciences, despite over two hundred
years of effort to either invent or find them. In this chapter we examine the Principle of
Complexity Management, whereby a system with greater information, but perhaps
lesser energy, can dominate a system with lesser information, but greater energy. The
principle is a recently proven generalization of an observation made by the
mathematician Norbert Wiener, and may be one of these universal principles.
Keywords: Complexity management principle, Global warming, Habituation,
Inverse power law, Laws, Leaky faucet, Memory, Network-centric warfare,
Universality Norbert, Wiener.
