Complex Systems and Patterns

Although the term 'pattern' is often used in science, it is an elusive term and can have different dialectic meanings in various disciplines. Yet, the 'feel' for this term is fairly consistent; it usually requires little explanation to understand what a pattern is, and therefore it usually tends to be used informally. Perhaps only in building architecture and software design, patterns are used in a more rigid fashion, as a methodological construct to solve recurring problems. This paper aims to argue that patterns, used in a slightly different way, can provide the same strength in order to improve communication amongst scientific disciplines. It is claimed that this advantage is more than a linguistic trick, but rather is based on the notion that discovery of patterns is in fact the essence of most scientific endeavours, especially in complex systems theor