Complexity at large

A decade ago, when the Santa Fe Institute was being organized, I coined a word for our principal area of research, a broad transdisciplinary subject covering aspects of simplicity and complexity as well as the properties of complex adaptive systems, including composite complex adaptive systems consisting of many adaptive agents. Unfortunately, I became discouraged about using the term after it met with a lukewarm response from a few of my colleagues. I comforted myself with the thought that perhaps a special name was unnecessary.