Complexity Explained [Paperback]

This book explains why complex systems research is important in understanding the structure, function and dynamics of complex natural and social phenomena. It illuminates how complex collective behavior emerges from the parts of a system, due to the interaction between the system and its environment. Readers will learn the basic concepts and methods of complex system research. The book is not highly technical mathematically, but teaches and uses the basic mathematical notions of dynamical system theory, making the book useful for students of science majors and graduate courses.

This book explains why complex systems research is important in understanding the structure, function and dynamics of complex natural and social phenomena. Readers will learn the basic concepts and methods of complex system research.

This book is, of course about complexity. The title of the book, as you may recognize was motivated (excuse me for using this very mild expression) by Daniel Dennetts Consciousness Explained [130]. Dennetts intention was to explain consciousness as the emergent product of the interaction among c- stituents having physical and neural character. The goal of this book is to explain how various types of complexity emerge due to the interaction among constituents. There are many questions to be answered, how to understand, control, decompose, manage, predict the many-faced complexity. After tea- ing thissubjectforseveralyearsIfeelthatthe time hascome toputthe whole story together. The term complex system is a buzzword, but we certainly dont have a single de?nition for it. There are several predominant features of compl- ity. Complex processes may show unpredictable behavior (which we still try to predict somehow), may lead to uncontrolled explosion (such in case of epilepsy, earthquake eruptions or stock market crashes). One of the char- teristic feature of simple systems is, that there is a single cause which implies a single ló`