The aforementioned results seem to point towards the occurrence
of spatio-temporal and/or dynamical complexity in the solar
cycle. Quoting Nicolis & Nicolis (2007), “complexity is not
a mere metaphor or a nice way to put certain intriguing things,
it is a phenomenon that is deeply rooted into the laws of nature,
where systems involving large numbers of interacting subunits
are ubiquitous”. Furthermore, Chang et al. (2006) defined the
dynamical complexity as “a phenomenon exhibited by a nonlinearly
interacting dynamical system within which multitudes of
different sizes of large scale coherent structures are formed, resulting
in a global nonlinear stochastic behavior for the dynamical
systems, which is vastly different from that could be surmised
from the original dynamical equations”. In this framework, complexity
can be defined as the tendency of a non-equilibrium system
to show a certain degree of spatio-temporally coherent features
resulting from the competition of different basic spatial
patterns (Badii & Politi 1997) playing the role of interacting subunits.
As a result, the spatio-temporal evolution of these complex
systems may display evolutionary events as for instance those
observed in the case of turbulent systems. It is important to emphasize
that complexity requires the occurrence of nonlinearities
and the intertwining of order and disorder (Nicolis & Nicolis
2007), and that it is generally related to the emergence of selforganization
in open systems (Klimontovich 1991, 1996).