The Engine of Complexity by John Mayfield

Author:John Mayfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Evolution as Computation
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

9

Complex Systems

What constitutes a complex system?

There is no widely accepted mathematical definition of a complex system. Computers, thunderstorms, the human brain, and corporations are all examples. Always they are made up of many parts interacting with one another in specific ways. Outcomes of these interactions are often hard to predict. Since one of my goals is to explain the existence of complex objects (and there is no clear distinction between an object and a system), it seems appropriate to examine a few such systems in greater detail. Clearly, the opportunity for a system to exhibit complex behavior must be greater when there are more parts. One surprising finding of research in this area is that complicated behavior does not require complicated parts. When systems have lots of interacting parts, even simple parts and simple interaction rules are sometimes sufficient to produce complex structure and behavior. We saw some examples of this with NKS computational systems in chapter 2 and sandpiles in chapter 3.

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