"Microscope, telescope: these words evoke the great scientific penetrations of the infinitely small and the infinitely great. [...] Today, we are confronted with another inifinite: the infinitely complex.
And this time we have no instrument to use. We have only our brain - our intelligence and our reason - to attack the immense complexity of life and society. [...] We need, then, a new instrument. [...] I shall call this instrument the macroscope (from macro, great, and skopein, to observe).
The macroscope is unlike other tools. It is a symbolic instrument made of a number of methods and techniques borrowed from very different disciplines.
It would be useless to search for it in laboratories and research centers, yet countless people use it today in the most varied fields. The macroscope can be considered the symbol of a new way of seeing, understanding and acting."
De Rosnay J., Le macroscope : vers une vision globale, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1975; The Macroscope: A New World Scientific System. English translation copyright © 1979 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

There are two illusions which divert our minds from the issue of complex thought, and which must be dispelled.
The first is the belief that complexity leads to the elimination of simplicity. Of course, wherever simplifying thought falters complexity does indeed appear. However, it incorporates all that can bring order, clearness, distinction and precision to knowledge. Whereas simplifying thought splits up reality's complexity, complex thought will include simplifying ways of thinking, insofar as possible. But it rejects the multilating, simplistic, one-sizing, and in the final analysis, blinding consequences of simplification, a simplification which takes itself for the reflection of what is real in reality.
The second illusion involves confusing complexity with completeness. Indeed, the ambition of complex thought is to account for the linkages between subject fields which disjunctive thinking (itself one of the main aspects of simplifying thought) breaks down;
this thinking isolates what it distinguishes, and obscures anything that could link, interact or interfere. In this sense, complex thought aspires to multidimensional knowledge. Yet, from the outset, it recognizes the impossibility of complete knowledge: for one of complexity's axioms is that omniscience is impossible, even in theory.
Morin E., Introduction à la pensée complexe, ESF éditeur, Paris, 1990