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The purpose of this book is to illustrate the fundamental concepts of complexity and complex behavior and the best methods to characterize this behavior by means of their applications to some current research topics from within the fields of fusion, earth and solar plasmas. In this sense, it is a departure from the many books already available that discuss general features of complexity. The book is divided in two parts. In the first part the most important properties and features of complex systems are introduced, discussed and illustrated. The second part discusses several instances of possible complex phenomena in magnetized plasmas and some of the analysis tools that were introduced in the first part are used to characterize the dynamics in these systems. A list of problems is proposed at the end of each chapter. This book is intended for graduate and post-graduate students with a solid college background in mathematics and classical physics, who intend to work in the field of plasma physics and, in particular, plasma turbulence. It will also be of interest to senior scientists who have so far approached these systems and problems from a different perspective and want a new fresh angle.
This book provides an introduction to the role of diversity in complex adaptive systems. A complex system--such as an economy or a tropical ecosystem--consists of interacting adaptive entities that produce dynamic patterns and structures. Diversity plays a different role in a complex system than it does in an equilibrium system, where it often merely produces variation around the mean for performance measures. In complex adaptive systems, diversity makes fundamental contributions to system performance. Scott Page gives a concise primer on how diversity happens, how it is maintained, and how it affects complex systems. He explains how diversity underpins system level robustness, allowing for multiple responses to external shocks and internal adaptations; how it provides the seeds for large events by creating outliers that fuel tipping points; and how it drives novelty and innovation. Page looks at the different kinds of diversity--variations within and across types, and distinct community compositions and interaction structures--and covers the evolution of diversity within complex systems and the factors that determine the amount of maintained diversity within a system. Provides a concise and accessible introduction Shows how diversity underpins robustness and fuels tipping points Covers all types of diversity The essential primer on diversity in complex adaptive systems
Complex Systems and Computation in Public Health Sciences is the first comprehensive book in population health science that meaningfully integrates complex systems theory, methodology, modeling, computational simulation, and real-world applications while incorporating current population health perspectives.
The domain of nonlinear dynamical systems and its mathematical underpinnings has been developing exponentially for a century, the last 35 years seeing an outpouring of new ideas and applications and a concomitant confluence with ideas of complex systems and their applications from irreversible thermodynamics. A few examples are in meteorology, ecological dynamics, and social and economic dynamics. These new ideas have profound implications for our understanding and practice in domains involving complexity, predictability and determinism, equilibrium, control, planning, individuality, responsibility and so on.Our intention is to draw together in this volume, we believe for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the manifold philosophically interesting impacts of recent developments in understanding nonlinear systems and the unique aspects of their complexity. The book will focus specifically on the philosophical concepts, principles, judgments and problems distinctly raised by work in the domain of complex nonlinear dynamical systems, especially in recent years.-Comprehensive coverage of all main theories in the philosophy of Complex Systems -Clearly written expositions of fundamental ideas and concepts -Definitive discussions by leading researchers in the field -Summaries of leading-edge research in related fields are also included
Spin glasses are disordered magnetic systems that have led to the development of mathematical tools with an array of real-world applications, from airline scheduling to neural networks. Spin Glasses and Complexity offers the most concise, engaging, and accessible introduction to the subject, fully explaining what spin glasses are, why they are important, and how they are opening up new ways of thinking about complexity. This one-of-a-kind guide to spin glasses begins by explaining the fundamentals of order and symmetry in condensed matter physics and how spin glasses fit into--and modify--this framework. It then explores how spin-glass concepts and ideas have found applications in areas as diverse as computational complexity, biological and artificial neural networks, protein folding, immune response maturation, combinatorial optimization, and social network modeling. Providing an essential overview of the history, science, and growing significance of this exciting field, Spin Glasses and Complexity also features a forward-looking discussion of what spin glasses may teach us in the future about complex systems. This is a must-have book for students and practitioners in the natural and social sciences, with new material even for the experts.
This primer offers readers an introduction to the central concepts that form our modern understanding of complex and emergent behavior, together with detailed coverage of accompanying mathematical methods. All calculations are presented step by step and are easy to follow. This new fourth edition has been fully reorganized and includes new chapters, figures and exercises. The core aspects of modern complex system sciences are presented in the first chapters, covering network theory, dynamical systems, bifurcation and catastrophe theory, chaos and adaptive processes, together with the principle of self-organization in reaction-diffusion systems and social animals. Modern information theoretical principles are treated in further chapters, together with the concept of self-organized criticality, gene regulation networks, hypercycles and coevolutionary avalanches, synchronization phenomena, absorbing phase transitions and the cognitive system approach to the brain. Technical course prerequisites are the standard mathematical tools for an advanced undergraduate course in the natural sciences or engineering. Each chapter includes exercises and suggestions for further reading, and the solutions to all exercises are provided in the last chapter. From the reviews of previous editions: This is a very interesting introductory book written for a broad audience of graduate students in natural sciences and engineering. It can be equally well used both for teac hing and self-education. Very well structured and every topic is illustrated with simple and motivating examples. This is a true guidebook to the world of complex nonlinear phenomena. (Ilya Pavlyukevich, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1146, 2008) Claudius Gros’ Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems: A Primer is a welcome addition to the literature. A particular strength of the book is its emphasis on analytical techniques for studying complex systems. (David P. Feldman, Physics Today, July, 2009).
This concise primer (based on lectures given at summer schools on complex systems and on a masters degree course in complex systems modeling) will provide graduate students and newcomers to the field with the basic knowledge of the concepts and methods of statistical physics and its potential for application to interdisciplinary topics. Indeed, in recent years, statistical physics has begun to attract the interest of a broad community of researchers in the field of complex system sciences, ranging from biology to the social sciences, economics and computer science. More generally, a growing number of graduate students and researchers feel the need to learn some basic concepts and questions originating in other disciplines without necessarily having to master all of the corresponding technicalities and jargon. Generally speaking, the goals of statistical physics may be summarized as follows: on the one hand to study systems composed of a large number of interacting ‘entities’, and on the other to predict the macroscopic (or collective) behavior of the system considered from the microscopic laws ruling the dynamics of the individual ‘entities’. These two goals are, to some extent, also shared by what is nowadays called ‘complex systems science’ and for these reasons, systems studied in the framework of statistical physics may be considered as among the simplest examples of complex systems—allowing in addition a rather well developed mathematical treatment.
What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. However, "action theory"—the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behavior—has been unable to account for the difference. Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation—one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike—underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions—as historical narrative, not inference—follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.
This volume provides challenges and Opportunities with updated, in-depth material on the application of Big data to complex systems in order to find solutions for the challenges and problems facing big data sets applications. Much data today is not natively in structured format; for example, tweets and blogs are weakly structured pieces of text, while images and video are structured for storage and display, but not for semantic content and search. Therefore transforming such content into a structured format for later analysis is a major challenge. Data analysis, organization, retrieval, and modeling are other foundational challenges treated in this book. The material of this book will be useful for researchers and practitioners in the field of big data as well as advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Each of the 17 chapters in the book opens with a chapter abstract and key terms list. The chapters are organized along the lines of problem description, related works, and analysis of the results and comparisons are provided whenever feasible.
A top expert explains why a social and economic understanding of complex systems will help society to anticipate and confront our biggest challenges Imagine trying to understand a stained glass window by breaking it into pieces and examining it one shard at a time. While you could probably learn a lot about each piece, you would have no idea about what the entire picture looks like. This is reductionism -- the idea that to understand the world we only need to study its pieces -- and it is how most social scientists approach their work. In A Crude Look at the Whole, social scientist and economist John H. Miller shows why we need to start looking at whole pictures. For one thing, whether we are talking about stock markets, computer networks, or biological organisms, individual parts only make sense when we remember that they are part of larger wholes. And perhaps more importantly, those wholes can take on behaviors that are strikingly different from that of their pieces. Miller, a leading expert in the computational study of complex adaptive systems, reveals astounding global patterns linking the organization of otherwise radically different structures: It might seem crude, but a beehive's temperature control system can help predict market fluctuations and a mammal's heartbeat can help us understand the "heartbeat" of a city and adapt urban planning accordingly. From enduring racial segregation to sudden stock market disasters, once we start drawing links between complex systems, we can start solving what otherwise might be totally intractable problems. Thanks to this revolutionary perspective, we can finally transcend the limits of reductionism and discover crucial new ideas. Scientifically founded and beautifully written, A Crude Look at the Whole is a powerful exploration of the challenges that we face as a society. As it reveals, taking the crude look might be the only way to truly see.