"Complex systems" Summary

Reference: Wikipeda, Complex systems

Complex systems is the subject of a diverse variety of sciences and professional practice methods. It is often overshadowed by the representation of natural physical organization with systems of equations, the main subject below. In the study of complex systems that are less usefully represented with equations various other kinds of narratives and methods for identifying, boundaries, exploring, designing and interacting with complex systems are used. A more broad view of the various disciplines and practice methodologies using the complex systems approach is found on the Encyclopedia of the Earth.[1]

The equations from which complex system models are developed generally derive from statistical physics, information theory and non-linear dynamics, and represent organized but unpredictable behaviors of systems of nature that are considered fundamentally complex. The physical manifestations of such systems cannot be defined, so the usual choice is to refer to "the system" as the mathematical information model, without referring to the undefined physical subject the model represents. One of a variety of journals using this approach to complexity is Complex Systems

Such systems are used to model processes in computer science, biology, economics, physics and many other fields. It is also called complex systems theory, complexity science, study of complex systems, sciences of complexity, non-equilibrium physics, and historical physics. A variety of abstract theoretical complex systems is studied as a field of mathematics.

The key problems of complex systems are difficulties with their formal modeling and simulation. From such a perspective, in different research contexts complex systems are defined on the basis of their different attributes. Since all complex systems have many interconnected components, the science of networks and network theory are important aspects of the study of complex systems. A consensus regarding a single universal definition of complex system does not yet exist.

Contents
1 Overview
2 History
3 Topics in the complex systems study
3.1 Challenges of managing complexity
3.2 Complexity and modeling
3.3 Complexity and chaos theory
4 Research centers, conferences, and journals
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

To be continued
14:28 　2010/08/19