Complexity Explained - P. Erdi (Springer, 2008) WW.pdf - Methodology - Yohoho25

Peter Erdi

Complexity Explained

Peter Erdi

Complexity Explained

With 129 Figures

123

Péter Érdi

Kalamazoo College

Center for Complex Systems Studies

Department of Physics, Department of Psychology

Academy Street 1200

49006 Kalamazoo

USA

perdi@kzoo.edu

and

KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Department of Biophysics

Konkoly-Thege út 29–33

1121 Budapest

Hungary

erdi@rmki.kfki.hu

ISBN-13 978-3-540-35777-3

e-ISBN-13 978-3-540-35778-0

DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-35778-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007934800

2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is

concerned, speciﬁcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,

reproduction on microﬁlm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication

or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9,

1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Violations are

liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply,

even in the absence of a speciﬁc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws

and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Typesetting and Production: LE-T E X Jelonek, Schmidt & Vöckler GbR, Leipzig

Cover design: Erich Kirchner, Heidelberg

Printed on acid-free paper SPIN 11545286 89/3180/YL

987654321

springer.com

To the memory of my parents

Preface

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 Dennett’s Consciousness Explained [130]. Dennett’s intention was to

explain consciousness as the emergent product of the interaction among con-

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 teach-

ing this subject for several years I feel that the time has come to put the whole

story together.

The term “complex system” is a buzzword, but we certainly don’t have

a single deﬁnition for it. There are several predominant features of complex-

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 charac-

teristic feature of simple systems is, that there is a single cause which implies

a single eﬀect. For large class of complex systems it is true that eﬀects are

fed back to modify causes. Biological cells belong to this class. Furthermore

they are open to material, energetic and information ﬂow by interaction with

their environment, still they are organizationally closed units. Another aspect

of complexity is the question how collective phenomena emerge by some self-

organized mechanisms. Thomas Schelling’s model, which suggests that strong

racial prejudice is not needed to generate urban segregation, is paradigmatic.

There is a remarkable and unique statistical feature of certain complex

systems. Generally we expect that there is an average, (say, the average height

of people), and the deviation from this average is symmetric. Biologists have

found that the Gaussian distribution can be applied in many, many cases. In

a large number of social systems (but not only there) we see another type

of pattern, occasionally called as the 80 / 20 rule. About 80 percent of the

income is made by 20% of people, 80% (well, 70 or 85) of ﬂights are landing

on twenty percent of the airports, while there are many small airports with

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