Related papers: What Isn't Complexity?
At present, there is a great deal of confusion regarding complexity and its measures (reviews on complexity measures are found in, e.g. Lloyd, 2001 and Shalizi, 2006 and more references therein). Moreover, there is also confusion regarding…
What do societies, the Internet, and the human brain have in common? They are all examples of complex relational systems, whose emerging behaviours are largely determined by the non-trivial networks of interactions among their constituents,…
Complexity is an inherent attribute of any project. The purpose of defining and documenting complexity is to have an early warning tool allowing a project team to focus on certain areas and aspects of the project in order to prevent and…
The concept of complexity appears in virtually all areas of knowledge. Its intuitive meaning shares similarities across fields, but disagreements between its details hinders a general definition, leading to a plethora of proposed…
To analyze the evolutionary emergence of structural complexity in physical processes we introduce a general, but tractable, model of objects that interact to produce new objects. Since the objects--\emph{$epsilon$-machines}--have well…
Numerous definitions for complexity have been proposed over the last half century, with little consensus achieved on how to use the term. A definition of complexity is supplied here that is closely related to the Kolmogorov Complexity and…
Nowadays the question `what is complexity?' is a challenge to be answered. This question is triggering a great quantity of works in the frontier of physics, biology, mathematics and computer science. Even more when this century has been…
Finding general principles underlying brain function has been appealing to scientists. Indeed, in some branches of science like physics and chemistry (and to some degree biology) a general theory often can capture the essence of a wide…
We explore a definition of complexity based on logic functions, which are widely used as compact descriptions of rules in diverse fields of contemporary science. Detailed numerical analysis shows that (i) logic complexity is effective in…
A complex system is a system composed of many interacting parts, often called agents, which displays collective behavior that does not follow trivially from the behaviors of the individual parts. Examples include condensed matter systems,…
Concepts used in the scientific study of complex systems have become so widespread that their use and abuse has led to ambiguity and confusion in their meaning. In this paper we use information theory to provide abstract and concise…
The global availability of communication services makes it possible to interconnect independently developed systems, called constituent systems, to provide new synergistic services and more efficient economic processes. The characteristics…
Basic problems in complex systems are surveyed in connection with Life. As a key issue for complex systems, complementarity between syntax/rule/parts and semantics/behavior/whole is stressed. To address the issue, a constructive approach…
This article summarises a Web-book on "Complexity" that was developed to introduce undergraduate students to interesting complex systems in the biological, physical and social sciences, and the common tools, principles and concepts used for…
This chapter does not deal with specific tools and techniques for managing complex systems, but proposes some basic concepts that help us to think and speak about complexity. We review classical thinking and its intrinsic drawbacks when…
Nature hosts a wealth of materials showcasing intricate structures intertwining order, disorder, and hierarchy, delivering resilient multifunctionality surpassing perfect crystals or simplistic disordered materials. The engineering of such…
Evolutionary complexity is here measured by the number of trials/evaluations needed for evolving a logical gate in a non-linear medium. Behavioural complexity of the gates evolved is characterised in terms of cellular automata behaviour. We…
Physicists study a wide variety of phenomena creating new interdisciplinary research fields by applying theories and methods originally developed in physics in order to solve problems in economics, social science, biology, medicine,…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
One may define a complex system as a system in which phenomena emerge as a consequence of multiscale interaction among the system's components and their environments. The field of Complex Systems is the study of such systems--usually…