Grasping Complexity

The century of complexity has come. The face of science has changed. Surprisingly, when we start asking about the essence of these changes and then critically analyse the answers, the result are mostly discouraging. Most of the answers are related to the properties that have been in the focus of scientific research already for more than a century (like non-linearity). This paper is Preface to the special issue "Grasping Complexity" of the journal "Computers and Mathematics with Applications". We analyse the change of era in science, its reasons and main changes in scientific activity and give a brief review of the papers in the issue.