W. Brian Arthur Quotes & Sayings

Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It's important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They're open-ended. In standard science this hit some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn't like perpetual novelty. — W. Brian Arthur

Assigning invention in cases like this is difficult, and modern writings on technology recognize this. Says computing pioneer Michael Williams:

There is no such thing as "first" in any activity associated with human invention. If you add enough adjectives to a description you can always claim your own favorite. For example the ENIAC is often claimed to be the "first electronic, general purpose, large scale, digital computer" and you certainly have to add all those adjectives before you have a correct statement. If you leave any of them off, then machines such as the ABC, the Colossus, Zuse's Z3, and many others (some not even constructed such as Babbage's Analytical Engine) become candidates for being "first. — W. Brian Arthur

We're facing a danger that economics is rigorous deduction based upon faulty assumptions. Science after science gets that way from time to time. When it does, we're in real trouble. — W. Brian Arthur

A new device or method is put together from the available components - the available vocabulary - of a domain. In this sense a domain forms a language; and a new technological artifact constructed from components of the domain is an utterance in the domain's language. This makes technology as a whole a collection of several languages, because each new artifact may draw from several domains. — W. Brian Arthur

Economists got away from really questioning how the world works, how decisions actually got made. If something doesn't conform to neoclassical models ... people are not somehow behaving themselves properly. — W. Brian Arthur

When you mathematize something you distill its essence. — W. Brian Arthur

If economics wants to understand the new economy, it not only has to understand increasing returns and the dynamics of instability. It also has to look at cognition itself, something we have never done before in economics. — W. Brian Arthur