Complexity engineering: New ideas for engineering design and engineering education

Abstract This paper presents a theoretical approach to complexity engineering by considering the complex thinking framework proposed by Edgar Morin. The main foundations of this approach are an open system design, emergence, randomness inclusion, and Gödel incompleteness, which are contextualized using real-word instructive problems. Considering these concepts, several conjectures related to engineering activity and engineering education are presented taking several Brazilian catastrophes as counterexamples.