Absolutely, this principle is universal. For design, personal life, and society in general. It actually stems from purest math:

The more variables you have to deal with, the more flexible you have to be. So to arrive to a solution you have to fix a small set of parameters as a starting point, which by being small will thus leave the degrees of freedom needed, to be solved through iteration. Actual physical simulations are programmed this way. It's the most basic math principle, so it must apply to all aspects of reality and life. And it does.

A common example is the three body problem.

This is the reason engineering is my religion.

I believe @south_korea_ln can confirm the above paragraph too.