TITLE:
The Breakdown of the Traditional Mechanistic Worldview, the Development of Complexity Sciences and the Pretence of Knowledge in Economics
AUTHORS:
Andreas Liening
KEYWORDS:
Bifurcation; Butterfly Effect; Chaos Theory; Complexity Theory; Nonlinear Systems
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.4 No.4,
April
30,
2013
ABSTRACT: This article is an introduction to
complexity theory, which will be discussed using the example of economic
science. In this context, a short historical overview is intended to
demonstrate why the traditional mechanistic worldview persistently remains a
part of economic science and how it led to the development of the theory of
complex systems, which, for example, can be subsumed under chaos theory.
Furthermore, a simple supply and demand model is employed as an example to
discuss this new theory and to describe the characteristics of complexity in
comparison with the general mechanistic principle. For this purpose, specially
designed software is used for the simulation and analysis of selected complex
systems.