This is mainly connected to Cristopher Alexander. But I have find in in Google Books, that in original book, Alexander cited something just after this sentence. "No complex adaptive system will succeed in adapting in a reasonable amount of time unless the adaptation can proceed subsystem by subsystem, each subsystem relatively independent of the others 31"
But this footnote is invisible for me. Somebody can check what is this?
https://books.google.pl/books?lr=&hl=pl&id=Kh3T3XFUfPQC&dq=%22complex+adaptive+system%22&q=%22complex+adaptive+system%22#v=snippet&q=%22complex%20adaptive%20system%22&f=false