Jain, Sanjay. “Complex Adaptive Systems: Some Research Issues.” (1997).
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The most complex systems known to us, e.g., living systems, brains, ecologies and human societies, seem to share certain common properties. All these systems are highly nonequilibrium systems, exchanging energy/materials/information with their environment. Within a certain range of environments they are quite robust, and exhibit complex states and processes characterized by a web of interactions among their components that endows hem with a certain organizational character. Perhaps the most striking property of these systems is the property of evolvability, namely, the ability of spontaneously modify the complexity of their own states, processes, and their very degrees of freedom.