The trouble is that most complex systems that evolve from simple systems do not work, and the reason is lack of understanding of the edge cases that the increments of evolution are supposed to address.

Systemantics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics :

> The term systemantics is a commentary on prior work by Alfred Korzybski called general semantics which conjectured that all systems failures could be attributed to a single root cause – a failure to communicate

Which character says "what we have here is a failure to communicate?" in the film 'Cool Hand Luke'?

It looks like the full OT quote has another sentence:

> A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

Is this why we are encouraged to write a test, ensure that it doesn't pass yet by running it, write code to make the test pass, ensure that there are sufficient tests and that they all pass, and only then commit to a pull request branch, so that the centralized build runner will verify that all of the tests pass before code is merged onto the release branch?

> A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

That's a truism; every system emerges as the sum of its parts and their histories; the law just paraphrases the obvious: all innovation is incremental if traced back far enough.