Citation:

Patten, B. C., B D. Fath*, J. S. Choi, AND et al. COMPLEX ADAPTIVE HIERARCHICAL SYSTEMS. Chapter 3-4, R. Costanza and S. E. Jorgensen (ed.), Understanding and Solving Environmental Problems in the 21st Century. Elsevier BV, AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, , 41-99, (2002).

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One of the most powerful images of our time, an image that has changed the way we think of ourselves and the way we think about our relationship to our environment, is the image of Earth viewed from the surface of the moon. As we view "spaceship Earth" we sense that the complexities of nature and the complexities of human societies are intertwined intimately within a single biosphere. Certainly there are particular subsystems that are of special interest at particular times in particular places. We are interested in our environment, our economy, and our culture. Sometimes our interest is focused on long-term global environmental trends, sometimes on short-term, local socio-economic problems. But regardless of the subsystem or the spatial-temporal scale, we commonly are concerned about the sustainability of complex systems. General Systems Theory provides insights into the behavior of all such systems that shold be useful in addressing questions concerning indicators of sustainable development. One can see arising as a special branch of this a "Theory of Complex, Adaptive, and Hierarchical Systems (CAHSystems)" designed to address, holistically and reductionistically as appropriate, the crucial problems of man-and-environment in a crowded unitary ecosphere. This chapter offers a variety of perspectives on the pluralistic emergence of such a theory and its applications.

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