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Encyclopedia > Complex adaptive system

Complex adaptive systems are special cases of complex systems. They are complex in that they are diverse and made up of multiple interconnected elements and adaptive in that they have the capacity to change and learn from experience. The term complex adaptive systems was coined at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute (SFI), by John H. Holland, Murray Gell-Mann and others. There are many definitions of complexity, therefore many natural, artificial and abstract objects or networks can be considered to be complex systems, and their study (complexity science) is highly interdisciplinary. ... The Santa Fe Institute (or SFI) is a non-profit research institute dedicated to the study of complex systems in Santa Fe, New Mexico founded by George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky in 1984 to study complex... Dr. John Henry Holland (February 2, 1929) is known as the father of genetic algorithms. ... Murray Gell-Mann (born September 15, 1929 in Manhattan, New York City, USA) is an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. ...


The term complex adaptive systems (or complexity science) is often used to describe the loosely organized academic field that has grown up around the study of such systems. Complexity science is not a single theory— it encompasses more than one theoretical framework and is highly interdisciplinary, seeking the answers to some fundamental questions about living, adaptable, changeable systems.


Examples of complex adaptive systems include the stock market, social insect and ant colonies, the biosphere and the ecosystem, the brain and the immune system, the cell and the developing embryo, manufacturing businesses and any human social group-based endeavour in a cultural and social system such as political parties or communities. There are close relationships between the field of CAS and artificial life. In both areas the principles emergence and self-organization are very important. The New York Stock Exchange A stock market is a market for the trading of company stock, and derivatives of same; both of these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately. ... Subfamilies Aenictinae Aenictogitoninae Aneuretinae Apomyrminae Cerapachyinae Dolichoderinae Dorylinae Ecitoninae Formicinae Leptanillinae Leptanilloidinae Myrmeciinae Myrmicinae Nothomyrmeciinae Ponerinae Proceratiinae Pseudomyrmecinae Ants are social insects that belong to the same order as the wasps and bees. ... The Global Biosphere:a false-color composite of CZCS images of plankton concentrations with land vegetation data collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instrument. ... An ecosystem, a contraction of ecological and system, refers to the collection of biotic and abiotic components and processes that comprise, and govern the behaviour of some defined subset of the biosphere. ... In animals, the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the control center of the central nervous system. ... The immune system protects the body from infection by pathogenic organisms. ... Drawing of the structure of cork as it appeared under the microscope to Robert Hooke from Micrographia which is the origin of the word cell. Cells in culture, stained for keratin (red) and DNA (green). ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Manufacturing, a branch of industry which accounts for about one-quarter of the worlds economic activity, is the application of tools and a processing medium to the transformation of raw materials into finished goods for sale. ... Social structure (also referred to as a social system) is a system in which people forming the society are organized by a patterns of prelationships. ... // Political scientists have developed concepts of different ideal types of political parties in order to better compare them with each other. ... A community usually refers to a group of people who interact and share certain things as a group, but it can refer to various collections of living things sharing an environment, plant or animal. ... Artificial life, also known as alife or a-life, is the study of life, or more specifically the evolution of life, through the use of artificial models or artifacts. ... A termite cathedral mound produced by a termite colony: a classic example of emergence in nature. ... Self-organization refers to a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases automatically without being guided or managed by an outside source. ...

Contents

Definitions

A CAS is a complex, self-similar collection of interacting adaptive agents. The study of CAS focuses on complex, emergent and macroscopic properties of the system. Various definitions have been offered by different researchers:

  • John H. Holland
A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent cells, species, individuals, firms, nations) acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing. The control of a CAS tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized. If there is to be any coherent behavior in the system, it has to arise from competition and cooperation among the agents themselves. The overall behavior of the system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment by many individual agents. (source: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop)
  • Kevin Dooley
A CAS behaves/evolves according to three key principles: order is emergent as opposed to predetermined (c.f. Neural Networks), the system's history is irreversible, and the system's future is often unpredictable. The basic building blocks of the CAS are agents. Agents scan their environment and develop schema representing interpretive and action rules. These schema are subject to change and evolution. (source: K. Dooley, AZ State University)
  • Other definitions
Insert the text of the quote here, without quotation marks.

Simplified view of an artificial neural network A neural network is a system of interconnecting neurons in a network working together to produce an output function. ...

Properties of CAS

What distinguishes a CAS from a pure multi-agent system (MAS) is the focus on top-level properties and features like self-similarity, complexity, emergence and self-organization. A MAS is simply defined as a system composed of multiple, interacting agents. In CASs, the agents as well as the system are adaptive: the system is self-similar. A CAS is a complex, self-similar collectivity of interacting adaptive agents. Complex Adaptive Systems are characterised by a high degree of adaptive capacity, giving them resilience in the face of perturbation. In computer science, a multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of several agents, capable of reaching goals that are difficult to achieve by an individual system. ... A self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself. ... For the Computer Science term, see Computational complexity theory. ... A termite cathedral mound produced by a termite colony: a classic example of emergence in nature. ... Self-organization refers to a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases automatically without being guided or managed by an outside source. ... Adaptive Capacity applies to both ecological systems and human social systems. ... For the band see Resilience (band) Resilience generally means the ability to recover from (or to resist being affected by) some shock, insult, or disturbance. ... Perturbation is a term used in astronomy to describe alterations to an objects orbit caused by gravitational interactions with other bodies. ...


Other important properties are adaptation (or homeostasis), communication, cooperation, specialization, spatial and temporal organization, and of course reproduction. They can be found on all levels: cells specialize, adapt and reproduce themselves just like larger organisms do. Communication and cooperation take place on all levels, from the agent to the system level. It has been suggested that Reactive homeostasis be merged into this article or section. ...


Graphic

Complex Adaptive System

Download high resolution version (2100x1500, 380 KB)  Acadac was inspired to create this graphic after reading: Roger Lewin (1992) Complexity: Life and the Edge of Chaos Steven Johnson (2001) Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software   File links The following pages link to this file: Emergence Complex...

Researchers and scientists

Technical works

In chronological order

  • V. Korotkikh, A Mathematical Structure for Emergent Computation, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London,1999;
  • V. Korotkikh and G. Korotkikh, Description of Complex Systems in terms of Self-Organization Processes of Prime Integer Relations, arXiv:nlin.AO/0509008;
  • V. Korotkikh and G. Korotkikh, On an Irreducible Theory of Complex Systems, arXiv:nlin.AO/0606023.
  • V. Korotkikh, On the Potential of a Description of Complex Systems for the Unification of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity
  • E.Ahmed, A.S.Hegazi and A.S.Elgazzar, An Overview of complex adaptive systems, nlin.AO/0506059

See also

This article or section reads like an advertisement. ... The Santa Fe Institute (or SFI) is a non-profit research institute dedicated to the study of complex systems in Santa Fe, New Mexico founded by George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky in 1984 to study complex... The Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences is a multi-disciplinary center in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. ...

External links


  Results from FactBites:
 
Syllabus of Readings for Complex Adaptive systems and Agent-Based Computational Economics (Tesfatsion) (388 words)
The system exhibits emergent properties, that is, properties arising from the interactions of the units that are not properties of the individual units themselves.
A CAS is a complex system that includes goal-directed units, i.e., units that are reactive and that direct at least some of their reactions towards the achievement of built-in (or evolved) goals.
A CAS is a complex system that includes planner units, i.e., units that are goal-directed and that attempt to exert some degree of control over their environment to facilitate achievement of these goals.
Complex system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1328 words)
Such a system may be discrete (such as a cellular automata system or set of difference equations), or it may be continuous as in a system of differential equations.
Because they are nonlinear, complex systems are more than the sum of their parts because a linear system is subject to the principle of superposition, and hence is literally the sum of its parts, while a nonlinear system is not.
Complex systems is therefore often used as a broad term encompassing a research approach to problems in many diverse discplines including neuroscience, meteorology, physics, computer science, artificial life, evolutionary computation, economics, earth quake prediction, heart cell synchronisation, immune systems, reaction-diffusion systems, epilepsy and enquiries into the nature of living cells themselves.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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