Priority of the simple and supremacy of the complex in the upbuilding of systems regulations and controls,
by C. Francois:
The upbuilding of any system necessarily starts from multiple interactions among a number of compatible elements. Such interactions are also related to competition among the elements for resources extracted from their common environment If competition is not to be finally destructive for most or all the elements, it must be compatible with the maintenance and enhancement of interrelations among them, within sustainable environmental conditions. Tolerable competition is made possible by automatic reciprocal limitations among the elements through multiple feedbacks, generally local in the first stages of systems organization. As such feedbacks tend to be specific and repetitive, they lead to the appearance of permanent regulations. These may be at the beginning of the process of statistical character, but tend normally to become stabilized and differentiated in specific ways, according to the nature of the resources and the more specific needs of some groups of elements. In this way, incipient regulations lead to the appearance of hierarchical controls and eventually of meta-controls and meta-meta-controls. In the elemental phases of this type of processes, we observe priority of the simple. Later on, when the system becomes hierarchically organized, supremacy of the complex appears. In this way bottom up processes lead to their top down ordering.
