A fragile world in the optics of simplicity and complexity

Abstract

Why do we call the world fragile? How did it turn out that scientific discoveries and the rapid development of technology did not at all rid us of the «black swans»? What happened to us in these spring months of 2020 clearly encroaches on our ideas about the stability, reliability and predictability of the world in which we live. Everything that was designed to guarantee sustainable development — public institutions, economics, education, science,medicine — at some point demonstrate powerlessness or, even worse, turn into a kind of threat.Today, few people doubt that our and future generations will have to live in an increasingly complex and increasingly unpredictable world. This article proposes to cast a glance at the situation of growth of uncertainties from two «hills’ — classical simplicity and non-classical complexity (complicacy). The authormakes a choice in favor of «parting with simplicity». But what does this mean? — We must turn our face to those ways of understanding the phenomena of fragility and uncertainty, which were rebuilt by intellectuals from different angles at the turn of the century, leaving the twentieth and coming into its own on thetwenty-first