Titre : The silent emergence of complexity in 3D printing Auteurs : Jean-Claude André, Revue : Entropy: Thermodynamics – Energy – Environment – Economy Numéro : Issue 1 Volume : 1 Date : 2020/03/4 DOI : 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2020.0496 ISSN : 2634-1476 Résumé : Invented in 1984 in a few days, the concept of additive manufacturing has been developed quickly enough to reach a global market of around 40 billion €/year with a 20% annual growth rate. Although the first technology was the space resolved polymerization of resins induced by light, other manufacturing methods have emerged since this founding date allowing the realization of objects in multiple materials. From the first proofs of concept, incremental mono-disciplinary improvements have been made leading to the current success. Today, other application spaces are emerging by exploiting the ability of certain materials to change their shape (and functionality) in the presence of a stimulation. This is how two sister technologies, 4D printing and bio-printing, were born with potential markets of several trillion €/year. But, for these transitions to be as successful as expected, we must accept to explore complication (4D) and complexity (Bio-printing). This observation therefore imposes an epistemological reflection into which scientists should deeply involve, in order to find ways of progress that avoid confining ourselves to an “autistic conduct” with an accumulation of proof of concepts. This article provides reminders on the theme of additive manufacturing, but above all it attempts to show how complexity has silently entered the dynamics of research on the theme, itself limited by the small number of researchers and by the classical difficulty of treating inverse problems and teleological approaches in research. Éditeur : ISTE OpenScience