Related papers: Life at the edge: complexity and criticality in bi…
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…
In this essay we elaborate on recent evidence demonstrating the presence of a second order phase transition in human brain dynamics and discuss its consequences for theoretical approaches to brain function. We review early evidence of…
From bird flocking to neural dynamics, complex systems generate fascinating structures and correlations. Often, seemingly simple dynamics lead to intricate emergent properties. Despite their visceral appeal, defining complex systems lacks…
For complex life to evolve, a sophisticated nervous system for handling its complexities was fundamental. The demand resulted in the emergence of brain's computational facility, the neuronal network. This facet of the brain is attested…
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…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
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…
The term complexity derives etymologically from the Latin plexus, which means interwoven. Intuitively, this implies that something complex is composed by elements that are difficult to separate. This difficulty arises from the relevant…
The sciences of complexity present some recurrent themes: the emergence of qualitatively new behaviors in dissipative systems out of equilibrium, the aparent tendency of complex system to lie at the border of phase transitions and…
The question of "what is life?" has challenged scientists and philosophers for centuries, producing an array of definitions that reflect both the mystery of its emergence and the diversity of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear on the…
This is my attempt to answer Schr\"odinger's question: "What is Life?". In living cell the local combination of atoms is reproduced with incredible accuracy. In the case of protein biosynthesis the notion of the physical aspect of the…
The recent discovery of universal principles underlying many complex networks occurring across a wide range of length scales in the biological world has spurred physicists in trying to understand such features using techniques from…
The universal concept of complexity by the dynamic redundance paradigm and the ensuing concept of extended dynamic fractality (physics/9806002) are applied here to higher levels of complexity corresponding to living systems. After recalling…
Physical emergence - crystals, rocks, sandpiles, turbulent eddies, planets, stars - is fundamentally different from biological emergence - amoeba, cells, mice, humans - even though the latter is based in the former. This paper points out…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…
When a biological system robustly corrects component-level errors, the direct pressure on component performance declines. Components may become less reliable, maintain more genetic variability, or drift neutrally in design, creating the…
The nature and source of evolutionary trends in complexity is difficult to assess from the fossil record, and the driven vs. passive nature of such trends has been debated for decades. There are also questions about how effectively…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
In order to make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition…
Cellular biology exists embedded in a world dominated by random dynamics and chance. Many vital molecules and pieces of cellular machinery diffuse within cells, moving along random trajectories as they collide with the other biomolecular…