The Newtonian organization believes the environment is, to a large extent, predictable and that, therefore, the system can be maneuvered in a deterministic, planned way to achieve its goals. Overall system performance is optimized through its functional subcomponents, and a bureaucratic hierarchy ensures coordination and accountability. In contrast to the Newtonian theory, in the Complexity paradigm, the equilibrium state is not the natural state of a system but one of several possible states. The Complexity paradigm uses systemic inquiry to build fuzzy, multivalent, multilevel, and multidisciplinary representations of reality. Systems can be understood by looking for patterns within their complexity, patterns that describe potential evolutions of the system.
Descriptions are indeterminate and complementary and observer dependent.
Even simple deterministic systems can have limited predictability. A system can move from equilibrium to chaos not only through structural changes but also parameter changes. Chaos is distinct from periodicity and randomness, but has characteristics of both. Random behavior never repeats itself, and is inherently unpredictable and disorganized except in a very special way. Periodic behavior is highly predictable because it always repeats itself over some finite time interval.