Complex Systems Science

The challenges of designing the needed Ultra Large Scale (ULS) systems are beyond the methods and techniques that humanity currently knows of. These systems are characterized by extraordinary decentralization, inherently conflicting, unknowable and diverse requirements, continuous evolution and deployment, heterogeneous, inconsistent, and changing elements, erosion of people/system boundary, normal failures and new paradigms for acquisition and policy. Today the largest systems being designed are what in the US military parlance are called System of Systems (SoS). The current cutting-edge SoS are characterized by operational and managerial independence of elements, evolutionary development, emergent behavior and geographic distribution. ULS will be SoS at Internet Scale. This is not a simple matter of extending the current approaches as P.W. Anderson in his 1972 classic paper described More is Different. We have definitely come a long way from that time in our approaches to design s...

The number of people backcountry skiing has increased significantly over the past ten years. Current sales of backcountry ski and rescue gear greatly outpace more traditional alpine, telemark, and snowboarding equipment. However, as higher numbers of people head into avalanche terrain more fatal accidents are occurring. In the early 1980s there were an average of 11 avalanche related deaths per year. That number has risen to an average of 30 over the past 5 years. Over that time avalanche specific rescue gear has been quick to adapt to the changing needs of backcountry skiers. However, over that same span of time philosophical approaches to risk management have been slow to adapt. In light of the imbalanced methods to avalanche safety and risk management, this study examined the preemptive decisions and perspectives skiers held as they prepared to enter Tuckerman Ravine. Results from this investigation show that despite significant technological advances 56% of the survey population did not have everyone in their group carry a beacon, shovel and probe. Similarly, 69% of the survey population did not have formal avalanche training. The underrepresentation of women in this study required an assessment of broader gender disparities within the backcountry skiing community. Quantitative and qualitative results show a lack of female leadership among recreational skiers. This leadership gap limits mentoring opportunities and decreases accessibility to the community for novice female backcountry skiers. This study proposes that mixed cognitive methods and systems thinking approaches to risk management will increase margins of safety as well as encourage diverse perspectives within the larger backcountry skiing community. 

Keywords: Systems thinking, dual-process thinking, complexity, preemptive decision making, naturalistic decision making, risk management, diversity, uncertainty, risk perception, human triggered avalanches.

The main argument in the chapter is that the creative process has its very root in the natural laws, especially under conditions of limited resources, which impose a conflict between alternative organization patterns in systems. After a general introduction, the author will illustrate the methods and the results of many computer-based experiments, starting from physical and chemical systems, moving on to models of brain functions, the evolution in a simulated community of protozoa and the use of ideas from genetics to solve complex problems.

Financial markets are a classical example of complex systems as they are compound by many interacting stocks. As such, we can obtain a surprisingly good description of their structure by making the rough simplification of binary daily returns. Spin glass models have been applied and gave some valuable results but at the price of restrictive assumptions on the market dynamics or they are agent-based models with rules designed in order to recover some empirical behaviors. Here we show that the pairwise model is actually a statistically consistent model with the observed first and second moments of the stocks orientation without making such restrictive assumptions. This is done with an approach only based on empirical data of price returns. Our data analysis of six major indices suggests that the actual interaction structure may be thought as an Ising model on a complex network withé interaction strengths scaling as the inverse of the system size. This has potentially important implica...

Adaptive control in the face of uncertainty involves making online predictions about events in order to plan actions to reliably achieve desirable outcomes. However, we often face situations in which the effects of our actions are probabilistic (e.g., returns on our investments), and the environment itself is dynamic, - it can change irrespective of any action we decide to take, and in a relatively stable or unstable way (e.g., economic climate). Therefore, the problem of control concerns learning to isolate the effects that are generated directly by our actions, from those that occur independently of them. We face this problem in a host of uncertain dynamic environments: ecological (using fertilizers to increase crop yield), economic (investing in real estate), industrial (operating nuclear power plants), mechanical (driving cars) and medical (stemming outbreaks of disease). Thus far there has been little attempt at a synthesis of the amassing research directed towards understanding control in the face of uncertainty. The aim of this book is to bring together theoretical and empirical research from disparate disciplines spanning Social, Cognitive and Clinical Psychology, Human Factors and Neuroscience to Engineering and Machine learning. It serves as a round up of the different techniques used to examine issues concerning control (prediction, agency, causality, uncertainty) and unifies a substantial amount of disparate research. The general framework (Monitoring and control- MC framework) used to achieve this proposes two central ideas (agency, uncertainty) that have important ramifications across disciplines. In sum, control processes involve self-regulatory mechanisms that enable us to make subjective estimates of success, which helps to anchor our interpretation of uncertain events. In addition, these estimates are integrated with estimations of rates of change of the events in the environment which helps us track the outcomes we aim to control.

In this paper, the effectiveness of the NetLogo programming environment is investigated, as regards assisting students (of various levels of achievement) of the Greek Higher Secondary Education, to understand how some simple ecosystems are structured and to model the systemic behaviour of such ecosystems by conceptualising their Complexity features. This paper is part of a wider research on teaching Ecosystem Complexity to high-school students, with the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s). Specific models from the NetLogo Models’ Library were used and students of the 2nd class of the Greek Lyceum (aged between 16 and 17) participated in the investigation. Apart from oral instruction, the students were asked to run the NetLogo simulations and do specific things with the models, answering simultaneously questions on worksheets provided to them. The studying and the evaluation of the worksheets by the researchers, as well as the post- instructional evaluation of t...

Este artículo presenta dos vertientes paralelas y entrelazadas: la obra de Robert Smithson, relacionada con la geofísica y la industria de la minería, y el desarrollo a partir de los años sesenta de la investigación científica de los sistemas dinámicos y los procesos de autoorganización de la materia: la teoría de la complejidad. Resumen del libro publicado bajo el mismo título. Revista Artnodes, 9, UOC – Barcelona, 2009.

Some thought spent on the sad disintegration of Europe and the termination of democracy. After Brexit and several battles of regions striving for more autonomy in Europe, we now face a horrendously violent crisis in Catalonia, of which Europe is not only the witness, but also an active promoter. All representatives of European institutions fail to understand that they cannot stand passively watching at the butchery of democracy committed by Spain against Catalo-nia. Passivity here is the equivalent of active brutality. European leaders know this crisis has been building up for decades, if not even centuries. And all European leaders failed understanding how trauma through oppression derives in popular surge, like we see it now in Catalonia. Europe is not a safe space for democracy. Europe has not reworked its trauma and its trauma implication through feudal structures based on greed, fame, violence and domination. The violence rackets in Europe are still active through representatives of few families playing what epigenetics have inscribed in their genes, the game of fierce dominance. Europe never deserved the Peace Nobel, and it deserves it even less now in the face of the crisis in Catalonia. Sadly enough, we can witness European leaders are repeating patterns as in early 1930s until 1935, allowing for brute force to subjugate the will of citizens in Catalonia who simply are tired of the abuses committed by a plutocracy reigning with impunity in Europe but even more so in Spain. We shall remember that European leaders left Catalan citizens alone facing a Spanish dictator and his fellow NAZI friends. We shall understand that history has changed, humanity progressed at least partly, but some patterns of history repeat.

The future of human computation (HC) benefits from examining tasks that agents already perform and designing environments to give those tasks computational significance. We call this natural human computation (NHC). We consider the possible future of NHC through the lens of Swarm!, an application under development for Google Glass. Swarm! motivates users to compute the solutions to a class of economic optimization problems by engaging the attention dynamics of crowds. We argue that anticipating and managing economies of attention provides one of the most tantalizing future applications for NHC.

Social Legal Theory (SLT) has been heralded as the “third pillar” of jurisprudence, offering a social scientific alternative to the rational relativity of legal positivism and the moral determinism of natural law. Yet recently SLT’s most ardent champion, Professor Brian Tamanaha, appears to have broken ranks. Assuming a “holistic” perspective, Tamanaha now contends that law “emerges” from both social and naturalistic influences. This move not only undermines SLT, it seemingly transforms that view into the existing theory of jurisilience, which uses the holistic epistemology of consilience to provide a bio-socio-cultural account of law’s essence.

Despite outward appearances, however, these approaches are far from identical. Unlike the revamped version of SLT, which is ontologically constrained and conflicted, jurisilience explains law’s emergence through systems science and cutting-edge sociology. It shows that law is not a simple assemblage of social and/or natural forces. Instead, it is a complex information network of interdependent “jurisystems.” Grounded in our natural need for homeostasis, human legality originates in our genetic and neurobiological systems, scales up to our normative social systems, and becomes externalized as a supreme system of formal law. Once entrenched, law does not remain stagnant, but continuously coordinates human conflicts, relieves social stress, and reinforces social bonds. Over time, law’s dynamism changes social behavior and cultural memory, initiating a cycle of epigenetics and gene-culture coevolution that renews our biological disposition for legality. Given law’s systemic nature, any socio-centric jurisprudence now seems obsolete. The fact is, jurisilience and jurisystems do not just systematize SLT; they systematize SLT right out of existence.

Severe space storms pose significant risk to critical infrastructures.  They are typically classified as high consequence, low probability events, yet the record over the last several hundred years indicates we may be overdue for a significant event.  How does the paradigm of complex adaptive systems and wicked problems help policy makers and industry address cost/benefit and risk management responsibilities to multiple stakeholders to prepare for cross-border events in the near future?

The properties of the firm are crucial starting points for developing theories on economy and management. The aim of this study is to propose a general theory of the social organization of production, mapping the essential conditions for its creation, development, and growth. In order to do so, we propose an evolutionary theory in which the relations of the organization's sociotechnical system manifest themselves through a self-perpetuating dynamic where leaders take on the role of social attractors and their viable outline is defined by their capacity for regeneration and by the flows of resources and information that pass through them. This goes against the finalist conceptions of the firm, in which the scope is to meet external demands. In this type of dynamics, the objective of the structure is to ensure its own organization and the realization of its identity and autonomy.

"Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy is partially informed by evidence-based measures. Many traditional measures are derived from population averages whose validity assumes adherence to the Central Limit Theorem. When a characteristic of an innovation system is represented by a complex network (i.e. a network with a power law degree distribution) from which evidence-based measures are derived, there is a significant likelihood that the scaling exponent, α, will be less than 3.0. In these instances the variance is infinite, the domain of attraction is no longer the Gaussian distribution and the population average no longer characterises it. Traditional measures are valid only for Gaussian and power law distributions with α≥3.0. Such measures are poor indicators of the emerging properties of real-world complex systems that usually have 2<α<3.
Scale-independent measures derived from the scaling properties of a complex system are naturally normalized making them comparable across entities of vastly different sizes. Scale-independent measures are valid for power law distributions with α≥1 while measures based on population averages are valid only for only α≥3.0.
This paper discusses the theory and practice of constructing scaling models of complex innovations systems that are easy to construct and update. Scale-independent measures derived from these models can answer a variety of policy relevant questions such as ‘how does a measure used to compare the performance of groups in a complex system change relative to group sizes?’ Or ‘how is the performance of one group evolving relative to other groups given the systemic scaling properties of the system?’ Scale-independent measures are useful tools for decision makers to inform policies for complex science, technology and innovation systems."

Le recours contemporain à la notion de "complexité" renvoie fréquemment à des démarches ayant tendance à unifier sa définition. En langue anglaise, sa réduction à une forme singulière (complexity theory ou complexity science) s'avère ainsi susceptible de masquer la variété des théories permettant de rendre compte des implications inhérentes au recours à cette notion. Cet article, en prenant en considération à la fois les traditions de recherche latines et anglosaxonnes, associées à la notion de complexité, suggère une approche plus nuancée, évitant la simplification de cette notion à certaines des conceptions dominantes qui y sont associées. Partant d'une approche étymologique, cet article propose d'envisager de façon chronologique l'émergence de trois générations de théories de la complexité; ce faisant, certains de leurs enracinements épistémologiques et socio-culturels sont introduits. D'un point de vue épistémologique, la réflexion proposée met en évidence certaines des interprétations hétérogènes sous-jacentes à la définition de ce qui est perçu comme complexe. Suivant une perspective anthropologique, ce texte évoque également la portée à la fois émancipatrice et asservissante susceptible d'être associée à l'idée de complexité. Sur la base des ambiguitiés mises en évidence, cet article suggère finalement de concevoir les contributions renvoyant aux théories contemporaines de la complexité, au même titre que la remise en question de leur légitimité épistémologique et éthique, à partir des boucles et des dynamiques dont elles sont constitutives. Ce faisant, les chercheurs et les praticiens en Sciences de l'éducation devraient considérer leurs pratiques en tant que processus
d'apprentissage dont la complexité renvoie autant aux transformations qu'ils étudient ou provoquent, qu'aux transformations inhérentes aux systèmes de représentations
auxquels ils ont recours pour les conceptualiser.

A central characteristic of the modern world consists of the growing dominance of artificial over natural problems. Human accumulation of power means that we are now capable of creating and destroying many things, including ourselves. Unfortunately, our destructive capacity is out-pacing our creative one; so, the threats to humanity become more awesome than the promises. So, problems multiply faster than we can solve them and the lead-time for making decisions shrinks into nothingness.
With that deteriorating situation in mind, this study initiates a systematic definition of complex problems as the first step in an emerging problemology. This short presentation, can only scratch the surface of that large area and leave for another time an in-depth research into the subject. The present beginning is a prerequisite to any scientific treatment of problems, because it lays down the foundations for further systematic and systemic work by outlining the concept, structure, and process of problems and by doing so answer the questions related to the nature, meaning, type, location, time, and solution of the world’s most critical issues.
Accordingly, the paper consists of three parts of two chapters each, covering successively the systemic, static, and dynamic aspects of problems. The chapters deal with the form and function, content, and context, as well as period and method of this subject. Thus, although the study does not go into any depth; it does cover the field of problem analysis exhaustively and sets the basis for more detailed and specialized research later.

Eucaridan evolution involved a process starting from a body organization characterized by an elongate and cylindrical cephalothorax, a well-developed abdomen composed of swimming appendages, ending in a tail fan formed by flattened uropods and a telson. This process would lead, ultimately, to a body organization characterized by a shortened and depressed cephalothorax, and a reduced and ventrally folded abdomen. This ultimate process is typically known as carcinization, and is commonly defined as the process of becoming a crab. In this work, the evolution of the superorder Eucarida was studied using complex networks. A new definition of crab and carcinization are given based on the results obtained. A crab is a topological structural closure that determines the formation of a triadic central core. The evolution of the crab implied the formation of a triadic structure with high closeness centrality, formed by the cephalon, the fused thoracomere 1-4 and the carapace, which represented a highly stable hierarchical core deeply buried or enclosed in the topological structure of the network, responsible for the generation of a highly integrated and robust topology. Under this new definition, the representative of the infraorder Anomura used in this work, which is commonly considered as a crab, is not. This network seemed to be characterized by the presence of a quasi-dyadic structure, formed by the cephalon and the carapace, which was not sufficient for generating the topological closure.

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The purpose here is to see if the paper, Universal Resilience Patterns in Complex Networks (Gao, Barzel, and Barabási 2016), can allow " one to think about complexity differently along a path to perhaps suggest modeling applications for real system[s] (simplified models of them not actual systems) in the future. " The paper is analyzed using the intrinsic nature of complexity—quantity and diversity of components and relations, together resulting in complexity of pattern-of-organization of structure and processes. The analysis is further developed by way of knowledge drawn from general systems, for example factor-development. At issue is whether or not there is an adequate match between the model or formulation presented in the paper and the real-world complex systems to which it is intended to apply.

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem that can be solved by finding optimal solutions. In this work we present an adaptation of the metaheuristic " Penguins Search Optimization Algorithm " (PeSOA) depending on the Penguins hunting strategies. The results show that the proposed adaptation which is favorably compared with the methods proposed in the literature, gives very good results in a reasonable time.

Literature on the modeling and simulation of complex adaptive systems (cas) has primarily advanced vertically in different scientific domains with scientists developing a variety of domain-specific approaches and applications. However, while cas researchers are inherently interested in an interdisciplinary comparison of models, to the best of our knowledge, there is currently no single unified framework for facilitating the development, comparison, communication and validation of models across different scientific domains. In this thesis, we propose first steps towards such a unified framework using a combination of agent-based and complex network-based modeling approaches and guidelines formulated in the form of a set of four levels of usage, which allow multidisciplinary researchers to adopt a suitable framework level on the basis of available data types, their research study objectives and expected outcomes, thus allowing them to better plan and conduct their respective research case studies. Firstly, the complex network modeling level of the proposed framework entails the development of appropriate complex network models for the case where interaction data of cas components is available, with the aim of detecting emergent patterns in the cas under study. The exploratory agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework allows for the development of proof-of-concept models for the cas system, primarily for purposes of exploring feasibility of further research. Descriptive agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework allows for the use of a formal step-by-step approach for developing agent-based models coupled with a quantitative complex network and pseudocode-based specification of the model, which will, in turn, facilitate interdisciplinary cas model comparison and knowledge transfer. Finally, the validated agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework is concerned with the building of in-simulation verification and validation of agent-based models using a proposed Virtual Overlay Multiagent System approach for use in a systematic team-oriented approach to developing models. The proposed framework is evaluated and validated using seven detailed case study examples selected from various scientific domains including ecology, social sciences and a range of complex adaptive communication networks. The successful case studies demonstrate the potential of the framework in appealing to multidisciplinary researchers as a methodological approach to the modeling and simulation of cas by facilitating effective communication and knowledge transfer across scientific disciplines without the requirement of extensive learning curves.

-- Abstract: The basis of Schemas Theory in the structure of the Western Worldview, Kinds of Being, the Divided Line, Semiotics and the Circulation of Projection. Companion for a complementary paper published by Springer Systems Science Handbook.

-- Keywords: Schemas, General Schemas Theory, Systems Engineering, Systems Theory, Synergistic Engineering, Philosophy of Science, Plato, Kant, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze

-- Original Paper https://www.academia.edu/34831626/General_Schemas_Theory basically rewritten for publication by Springer as the first paper in this pair. The rewritten paper became too complex and so I pulled out the excess material and present it here as the second paper of the pair.

-- Companion paper:
Palmer K.D. (2021) General Schemas Theory. A New Basis for Systems Engineering Practice. In: Metcalf G.S., Kijima K., Deguchi H. (eds) Handbook of Systems Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0370-8_73-1
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-981-13-0370-8_73-1

The aim of this article is to open a conversation between the complexity & education community and the field of interdisciplinarity (as well as its close relative, interprofessionalism). It starts by describing two very different streams of thought in the literature on interdisciplinary research and education: One that focuses on the socio-cultural dynamics among disciplinary ‘knowers’ and one that emphasizes the complexity of the phenomena studied by these disciplinary knowers. Next, the author argues that recent epistemological thinking associated with the complexity & education community can help to integrate these streams of thought—offering a way for interdisciplinary inquiry to respect both the complexity of knowers and the complexity of the known.

We raise the new possibility that people diagnosed with developmental dyslexia (DD) are specialized in explorative cognitive search, and rather than having a neurocognitive disorder, play an essential role in human adaptation. Most DD research has studied educational difficulties, with theories framing differences in neurocognitive processes as deficits. However, people with DD are also often proposed to have certain strengths – particularly in realms like discovery, invention, and creativity – that deficit-centered theories cannot explain. We investigate whether these strengths reflect an underlying explorative specialization. We re-examine experimental studies in psychology and neuroscience using the framework of cognitive search, whereby many psychological processes involve a trade-off between exploration and exploitation. We report evidence of an explorative bias in DD-associated cognitive strategies. High DD prevalence and an attendant explorative bias across multiple areas of cognition suggest the existence of explorative specialization. An evolutionary perspective explains the combination of findings and challenges the view that individuals with DD have a disorder. In cooperating groups, individual specialization is favored when features that confer fitness benefits are functionally incompatible. Evidence for search specialization suggests that, as with some other social organisms, humans mediate the exploration–exploitation trade-off by specializing in complementary strategies. The existence of a system of collective cognitive search that emerges through collaboration would help to explain our species’ exceptional adaptiveness. It also aligns with evidence for substantial variability during our evolutionary history and the notion that humans are adapted not to a particular habitat but to variability itself. Specialization creates interdependence and necessitates balancing complementary strategies. Reframing DD therefore underscores the urgency of changing certain cultural practices to ensure we do not inhibit adaptation. Key improvements would remove cultural barriers to exploration and nurture explorative learning in education, academia, and the workplace, as well as emphasize collaboration over competition. Specialization in complementary search abilities represents a meta-adaptation; through collaboration, this likely enables human groups (as a species and as cultural systems) to successfully adapt. Cultural change to support this system of collaborative search may therefore be essential in confronting the challenges humanity now faces.

Developing complex problem-solving is crucial to deal with the uncertainty, unpredictability and continuous changes that permeate and dynamise our complex world. Accordingly, complex problem-solving skills should be a central focus in modern learning. This requires specific learning environments suitable to promote and motivate holistic engagement (heads, hands, hearts) in meaningful complex problem scenarios. These needs defeat educational paradigms centred on reductionist approaches to problem-solving and the physical boundaries of traditional classrooms. Serious games have the potentialities to address these needs by: i) engaging players in meaningful problem-solving processes set in simulated complex environments; ii) promoting the cognitive, affective and behavioural involvement of players in an integrative way in game-based learning scenarios. Even though serious games have been effectively used to foster problem-solving skills, researchers have suggested that serious games face challenges related to the successful integration of engaging game environments and meaningful game-based learning experiences. Therefore, there is a need for instruments to support the evaluation of serious games, in order to facilitate the identification of games suitable to promote the development of complex problem-solving skills through motivating and meaningful gameplay experience. Motivated by this context, we developed a framework to evaluate game systems suitable to promote intrinsically-motivating problem-solving processes in complex game-based learning scenarios. The framework comprises a theory-based model conceptualising gameplay as a contextualised activity process engaging the players holistically in the management of complex problem scenarios and an instrument to analyse games in order to identify affordances that may promote such processes. This article presents the evaluation framework, along with an exploratory evaluation of the analysis instrument based on an empirical case study.

The article reviews the origins, precursors, and main proponents of climate change tipping points, and the debates that the tipping point concept has occasioned. The importance of dynamical systems theory, GAIA theory, and abrupt climate change to the main proponents of tipping point warning systems is noted and situated in historical context. The ‘semantic confusion’ that animates contemporary debates,
it is suggested, results not simply from a narrow conception of tipping points, but from inattention to the way metaphor was used to reshape climate policy. A deeper understanding of dynamical systems theory and its origins (both mathematical and metaphorical) is recommended for addressing the value of tipping points in policy.

The study of complex systems in a unified framework has become recognized in recent years as a new scientific discipline, the ultimate of interdisciplinary fields. Breaking down the barriers between physics, chemistry and biology and the so-called soft sciences of psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology, this text explores the universal physical and mathematical principles that govern the emergence of complex systems from simple components.

Dynamics of Complex Systems is the first text describing the modern unified study of complex systems. It is designed for upper-undergraduate/beginning graduate-level students, and covers a wide range of applications in a wide array of disciplines. A central goal of this text is to develop models and modeling techniques that are useful when applied to all complex systems. This is done by adopting both analytic tools, from statistical mechanics to stochastic dynamics, and computer simulation techniques, such as cellular automata and Monte Carlo. In four sets of paired, self-contained chapters, Yaneer Bar-Yam discusses complex systems in the context of neural networks, protein folding, living organisms, and finally, human civilization itself. He explores fundamental questions about the structure, dynamics, evolution, development and quantitative complexity that apply to all complex systems. In the first chapter, mathematical foundations such as iterative maps and chaos, probability theory and random walks, thermodynamics, information and computation theory, fractals and scaling, are reviewed to enable the text to be read by students and researchers with a variety of backgrounds.

It is not possible to speak of a single systems approach. There are rather of a number of systems approaches, each loosely drawing on different aspects of a family composed mainly of, general system theory, cybernetics, information theory, chaos theory, and complexity theory. Systems approaches have been used in most of the social sciences, particularly sociology and management, but their use has extended into the arts and humanities.Creativity researchers have used systems approaches drawing on very different sources and in very different ways. The main focus has been to highlight creativity as a phenomenon that occurs in the context of multiple systems, and therefore involves a network of interactions.