Related papers: What Isn't Complexity?
Complex systems and their underlying convoluted networks are ubiquitous, all we need is an eye for them. They pose problems of organized complexity which cannot be approached with a reductionist method. Complexity science and its emergent…
Complex systems have become a popular lens for analyzing cities and complexity theory has many implications for urban performance and resilience. This paper develops a typology of measures and indicators for assessing the physical…
This work aims at discussing the complexity aspect of software while demonstrating its relationship with security. Complexity is an essential part of software; however, numerous studies indicate that they increase the vulnerability of the…
Understanding the origins of complexity is a fundamental challenge with implications for biological and technological systems. Network theory emerges as a powerful tool to model complex systems. Networks are an intuitive framework to…
Why life is complex and --most importantly-- what is the origin of the over abundance of complexity in nature? This is a fundamental scientific question which, paraphrasing the late Per Bak, "is screaming to be answered but seldom is even…
Humans communicate using systems of interconnected stimuli or concepts -- from language and music to literature and science -- yet it remains unclear how, if at all, the structure of these networks supports the communication of information.…
The quest for a scientific description of consciousness has given rise to new theoretical and empirical paradigms for the investigation of phenomenological contents as well as clinical disorders of consciousness. An outstanding challenge in…
Economies are complex man-made systems where organisms and markets interact according to motivations and principles not entirely understood yet. The increasing dissatisfaction with the postulates of traditional economics i.e. perfectly…
Context dependence is central to the description of complexity. Keying on the pairwise definition of "set complexity" we use an information theory approach to formulate general measures of systems complexity. We examine the properties of…
This paper provides a precise and scientific definition of complexity and coupling, grounded in the functional domain, particularly within industrial control and automation systems (iCAS). We highlight the widespread ambiguity in defining…
Biological systems, from a cell to the human brain, are inherently complex. A powerful representation of such systems, described by an intricate web of relationships across multiple scales, is provided by complex networks. Recently, several…
Hierarchical structure is an essential part of complexity, important notion relevant for a wide range of applications ranging from biological population dynamics through robotics to social sciences. In this paper we propose a simple…
Software is among the most complex endeavors of the human mind; large scale systems can have tens of millions of lines of source code. However, seldom is complexity measured above the lowest level of code, and sometimes source code files or…
Hierarchy and centrality are two popular notions used to characterize the importance of entities in complex systems. Indeed, many complex systems exhibit a natural hierarchical structure, and centrality is a fundamental characteristic…
Cognitive function requires the coordination of neural activity across many scales, from neurons and circuits to large-scale networks. As such, it is unlikely that an explanatory framework focused upon any single scale will yield a…
Criticality has been proposed as a mechanism for the emergence of complexity, life, and computation, as it exhibits a balance between robustness and adaptability. In classic models of complex systems where structure and dynamics are…
We show that extremely simple systems of a not too large number of particles can be simultane- ously thermally stable and complex. To such an end, we extend the statistical complexity's notion to simple configurations of non-interacting…
The human mind is known to be sensitive to complexity. For instance, the visual system reconstructs hidden parts of objects following a principle of maximum simplicity. We suggest here that higher cognitive processes, such as the selection…
The problem of defining and studying complexity of a time series has interested people for years. In the context of dynamical systems, Grassberger has suggested that a slow approach of the entropy to its extensive asymptotic limit is a sign…
Entropy always increases monotonically in a closed system but complexity increases at first and then decreases as equilibrium is approached. Commonsense information-related definitions for entropy and complexity demonstrate that complexity…