We suggest a new pretopological model for pattern recognition which was introduced to study complex economic systems. The model has its origin in the concept of “neighbour”, which is both primitive and fundamental in pattern recognition. Pretopology enables us to develop a perceptive and topological approach for patterns and to see that problems, apparently different, are in fact identical e.g. clustering and recognition, search of skeletons in image processing and search of an informative learning set. It should be noted that the suggeted model is more than a descriptive one.