The question of the formation and consolidation of personal trust enables us to transfer our abstractly formulated problem of the reduction of complexity to the dimension of time, and to show that the problem of forming trust relationships must be solved gradually, step by step. The 'principle of small steps' replaces simpler forms of adaptation to the environment when the environment also operates in a contingent fashion or is too complex for adaptation at one stroke. For these, systems need time.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's broader systems theory and the concept of complexity reduction, likely familiar from social theory studies.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 190