COMPLEXITY
EXPLAINED
#ComplexityExplained
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 Interactions 4
2 Emergence 6
3 Dynamics 8
4 Self-organization 10
5 Adaptation 12
6 Interdisciplinarity 14
7 Methods 16
COMPLEXITY EXPLAINED
“There’s no love in a carbon atom, no hurricane in
a water molecule, no financial collapse in a dollar
bill.” (Peter Dodds)
Complexity science, also called complex systems science,
studies how a large collection of components - locally
interacting with each other at the small scales - can
spontaneously self-organize to exhibit non-trivial global
structures and behaviors at larger scales, often without
external intervention, central authorities or leaders.
The properties of the collection may not be understood or
predicted from the full knowledge of its constituents alone.
Such a collection is called a complex system and it requires
new mathematical frameworks and scientific methodologies
for its investigation.
Here are a few things you should know about complex
systems.
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INTERACTIONS
COMPLEX SYSTEMS CONSIST OF MANY
COMPONENTS INTERACTING WITH EACH
OTHER AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT IN
MULTIPLE WAYS.
“Every object that biology studies is a
system of systems.”
(Francois Jacob)
Complex systems are often characterized by
many components that interact in multiple
ways among each other and potentially with
their environment too. These components
form networks of interactions, sometimes
with just a few components involved in many
interactions. Interactions may generate novel
information that make it difficult to study
components in isolation or to completely
predict their future. In addition, the
components of a system can also be whole
new systems, leading to systems of systems,
being interdependent on one another.
The main challenge of complexity science is
not only to see the parts and their connections
but also to understand how these connections
give rise to the whole.
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EXAMPLES:
• Billions of interacting neurons in the
human brain
• Computers communicating in the Internet
• Humans in multifaceted relationships
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
System, component, interactions, network,
structure, heterogeneity, inter-relatedness,
inter-connectedness, interdependence,
subsystems, boundaries, environment,
open/closed systems, systems of systems.
REFERENCES:
Mitchell, Melanie.
Complexity: A Guided Tour.
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Capra, Fritjof and Luisi, Pier Luigi.
The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision.
Cambridge University Press, 2016.
INTERACTIONS 1
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EMERGENCE
PROPERTIES OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS AS A
WHOLE ARE VERY DIFFERENT, AND OFTEN
UNEXPECTED, FROM PROPERTIES OF THEIR
INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS.
“You don’t need something more to
get something more. That’s what
emergence means.”
(Murray Gell-Mann)
In simple systems, the properties of the whole
can be understood or predicted from the
addition or aggregation of its components.
In other words, macroscopic properties of
a simple system can be deduced from the
microscopic properties of its parts. In complex
systems, however, the properties of the whole
often cannot be understood or predicted from
the knowledge of its components because of
a phenomenon known as “emergence.” This
phenomenon involves diverse mechanisms
causing the interaction between components
of a system to generate novel information and
exhibit non-trivial collective structures and
behaviors at larger scales.
This fact is usually summarized with the
popular phrase “the whole is more than the
sum of its parts.”
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EXAMPLES:
• A massive amount of air and vapor
molecules forming a tornado
• Multiple cells forming a living organism
• Billions of neurons in a brain producing
consciousness and intelligence
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
Emergence, scales, non-linearity, bottom-
up, description, surprise, indirect effects,
non-intuitiveness, phase transition, non-
reducibility, breakdown of traditional linear/
statistical thinking, “the whole is more than
the sum of its parts.”
REFERENCES:
Bar-Yam, Yaneer.
Dynamics of Complex Systems.
Addison-Wesley, 1997.
Ball, Philip.
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another.
Macmillan, 2004.
EMERGENCE 2
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DYNAMICS
COMPLEX SYSTEMS TEND TO CHAGE
THEIR STATES DYNAMICALLY, OFTEN
SHOWING UNPREDICTABLE
LONG-TERM BEHAVIOR.
“Chaos: When the present determines
the future, but the approximate
present does not approximately
determine the future.”
(Edward Lorenz)
Systems can be analyzed in terms of the
changes of their states over time. A state
is described in sets of variables that best
characterize the system.
As the system changes its state from one
to another, its variables also change, often
responding to its environment.
This change is called linear if it is directly
proportional to time, the system’s current
state, or changes in the environment, or
non-linear if it is not proportional to them.
Complex systems are typically non-linear,
changing at different rates depending on their
states and their environment.
They also may have stable states at which
they can stay the same even if perturbed, or
unstable states at which the systems can be
disrupted by a small perturbation.
In some cases, small environmental changes
can completely change the system behavior,
known as bifurcations, phase transitions, or
8 “tipping points.”
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Some systems are “chaotic” - extremely
sensitive to small perturbations and
unpredictable in the long run, showing the so-
called “butterfly effect.”
A complex system can also be path-dependent,
that is, its future state depends not only on its
present state, but also on its past history.
EXAMPLES:
• Weather constantly changing in
unpredictable ways
• Financial volatility in the stock market
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
Dynamics, behavior, non-linearity, chaos,
non-equilibrium, sensitivity, butterfly effect,
bifurcation, long-term non-predictability,
uncertainty, path/context dependence,
non-ergodicity.
REFERENCES:
Strogatz, Steven H.
Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos.
CRC Press, 1994.
Gleick, James.
Chaos: Making a New Science.
Open Road Media, 2011.
DYNAMICS 3
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SELF-ORGANIZATION
COMPLEX SYSTEMS MAY SELF-ORGANIZE
TO PRODUCE NON-TRIVIAL PATTERNS
SPONTANEOUSLY WITHOUT A BLUEPRINT.
“It is suggested that a system of
chemical substances, called morphogens,
reacting together and diffusing through
a tissue, is adequate to account for the
main phenomena of morphogenesis.”
(Alan Turing)
Interactions between components of a
complex system may produce a global pattern
or behavior. This is often described as self-
organization, as there is no central or external
controller.
Rather, the “control” of a self-organizing
system is distributed across components and
integrated through their interactions. Self-
organization may produce physical/functional
structures like crystalline patterns of materials
and morphologies of living organisms,
or dynamic/informational behaviors like
shoaling behaviors of fish and electrical pulses
propagating in animal muscles.
As the system becomes more organized by
this process, new interaction patterns may
emerge over time, potentially leading to the
production of greater complexity.
In some cases, complex systems may self-
organize into a “critical” state that could only
exist in a subtle balance between randomness
10 and regularity.
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Patterns that arise in such self-organized
critical states often show various peculiar
properties, such as self-similarity and power-
law distributions of pattern properties.
EXAMPLES:
• Single egg cell dividing and eventually
self-organizing into complex shape of an
organism
• Cities growing as they attract more people
and money
• A large population of starlings showing
complex flocking patterns
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
Self-organization, collective behavior,
swarms, patterns, space and time, order from
disorder, criticality, self-similarity, burst, self-
organized criticality, power laws, heavy-tailed
distributions, morphogenesis, decentralized/
distributed control, guided self-organization.
REFERENCES:
Ball, Philip.
The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation
in Nature.
Oxford University Press, 1999.
Camazine, Scott, et al.
Self-Organization in Biological Systems.
Princeton University Press, 2003.
SELF-ORGANIZATION 4
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ADAPTATION
COMPLEX SYSTEMS MAY ADAPT AND
EVOLVE.
“Nothing in biology makes sense
except in the light of evolution.”
(Theodosius Dobzhansky)
Rather than just moving towards a steady
state, complex systems are often active and
responding to the environment - the difference
between a ball that rolls to the bottom of a
hill and stops and a bird that adapts to wind
currents while flying. This adaptation can
happen at multiple scales: cognitive, through
learning and psychological development;
social, via sharing information through social
ties; or even evolutionary, through genetic
variation and natural selection.
When the components are damaged or
removed, these systems are often able to
adapt and recover their previous functionality,
and sometimes they become even better than
before. This can be achieved by robustness, the
ability to withstand perturbations; resilience,
the ability to go back to the original state
after a large perturbation; or adaptation, the
ability to change the system itself to remain
functional and survive. Complex systems
with these properties are known as complex
adaptive systems.
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EXAMPLES:
• An immune system continuously learning
about pathogens
• A colony of termites that repairs damages
caused to its mound
• Terrestrial life that has survived numerous
crisis events in billions of years of its
history
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
Learning, adaptation, evolution, fitness
landscapes, robustness, resilience, diversity,
complex adaptive systems, genetic
algorithms, artificial life, artificial intelligence,
swarm intelligence, creativity, open-
endedness.
REFERENCES:
Holland, John Henry.
Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems.
MIT press, 1992.
Solé, Ricard, and Elena, Santiago F.
Viruses as Complex Adaptive Systems.
Princeton University Press, 2018.
ADAPTATION 5
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INTERDISCIPLINARITY
COMPLEXITY SCIENCE CAN BE USED TO
UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE A WIDE
VARIETY OF SYSTEMS IN MANY DOMAINS.
“It may not be entirely vain, however,
to search for common properties among
diverse kinds of complex systems...
The ideas of feedback and information
provide a frame of reference for viewing
a wide range of situations.”
(Herbert Simon)
Complex systems appear in all scientific and
professional domains, including physics,
biology, ecology, social sciences, finance,
business, management, politics, psychology,
anthropology, medicine, engineering,
information technology, and more. Many of
the latest technologies, from social media
and mobile technologies to autonomous
vehicles and blockchain, produce complex
systems with emergent properties that are
crucial to understand and predict for societal
well-being.
A key concept of complexity science is
universality, which is the idea that many
systems in different domains display
phenomena with common underlying
features that can be described using the same
scientific models. These concepts warrant
a new multidisciplinary mathematical/
14 computational framework.
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Complexity science can provide a
comprehensive, cross-disciplinary analytical
approach that complements traditional
scientific approaches that focus on specific
subject matter in each domain.
EXAMPLES:
• Common properties of various information-
processing systems (nervous systems, the
Internet, communication infrastructure)
• Universal patterns found in various
spreading processes (epidemics, fads,
forest fires)
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
Universality, various applications, multi-/
inter-/cross-/trans-disciplinarity, economy,
social systems, ecosystems, sustainability,
real-world problem solving, cultural systems,
relevance to everyday life decision making.
REFERENCES:
Thurner, Stefan, Hanel, Rudolf and Klimek,
Peter.
Introduction to the Theory of Complex
Systems.
Oxford University Press, 2018.
Page, Scott E.
The Model Thinker.
Hachette UK, 2018.
INTERDISCIPLINARITY 6
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METHODS
MATHEMATICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL
METHODS ARE POWERFUL TOOLS TO
STUDY COMPLEX SYSTEMS.
“All models are wrong, but some
are useful.”
(George Box)
Complex systems involve many variables and
configurations that cannot be explored simply
with intuition or paper-and-pencil calculation.
Instead, advanced mathematical and
computational modeling, analysis and
simulations are almost always required to see
how these systems are structured and change
with time.
With the help of computers, we can check
if a set of hypothetical rules could lead to a
behavior observed in nature, and then use
our knowledge of those rules to generate
predictions of different “what-if” scenarios.
Computers are also used to analyze massive
data coming from complex systems to reveal
and visualize hidden patterns that are not
visible to human eyes.
These computational methods can lead
to discoveries that then deepen our
understanding and appreciation of nature.
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EXAMPLES:
• Agent-based modeling for the flocking of
birds
• Mathematical and computer models of
the brain
• Climate forecasting computer models
• Computer models of pedestrian dynamics
RELEVANT CONCEPTS:
Modeling, simulation, data analysis,
methodology, agent-based modeling,
network analysis, game theory, visualization,
rules, understanding.
REFERENCES:
Pagels, Heinz R.
The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and
the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity.
Bantam Books, 1989.
Sayama, Hiroki.
Introduction to the Modeling and Analysis of
Complex Systems.
Open SUNY Textbooks, 2015.
METHODS 7
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“I think the next [21st] century will be the
century of complexity.”
(Stephen Hawking)
CONTRIBUTORS
Manlio De Domenico*, Chico Camargo, Carlos Gershenson,
Daniel Goldsmith, Sabine Jeschonnek, Lorren Kay, Stefano
Nichele, José R. Nicolás, Thomas Schmickl, Massimo Stella,
Josh Brandoff, Ángel José Martínez Salinas, Hiroki Sayama*
(* Corresponding authors)
CREDITS
Designed and edited by: Serafina Agnello
serafina.agnello[at]gmail.com
Serafina Agnello
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Special thanks to the following who provided inputs and
feedback:
Hayford Adjavor, Alex Arenas, Yaneer Bar-Yam, Rogelio Basurto Flores,
Michele Battle-Fisher, Anton Bernatskiy, Jacob D. Biamonte, Victor
Bonilla, Dirk Brockmann, Victor Buendia, Seth Bullock, Simon Carrignon,
Xubin Chai, Jon Darkow, Luca Dellanna, David Rushing Dewhurst, Peter
Dodds, Alan Dorin, Peter Eerens, Christos Ellinad, Diego Espinosa,
Ernesto Estrada, Nelson Fernández, Len Fisher, Erin Gallagher, Riccardo
Gallotti, Pier Luigi Gentilli, Lasse Gerrits, Nigel Goldenfeld, Sergio Gómez,
Héctor Gómez-Escobar, Alfredo González-Espinoza, Marcus Guest, J. W.
Helkenberg, Stephan Herminghaus, Enrique Hernández-Zavaleta, Marco
A. Javarone, Hang-Hyun Jo, Pedro Jordano, Abbas Karimi, J. Kasmire,
Erin Kenzie, Tamer Khraisha, Heetae Kim, Bob Klapetzky, Brennan Klein,
Karen Kommerce, Roman Koziol, Roland Kupers, Erika Legara, Carl Lipo,
Oliver Lopez-Corona, Yeu Wen Mak, Vivien Marmelat, Steve McCormack,
Dan Mønster, Alfredo Morales, Yamir Moreno, Ronald Nicholson, Enzo
Nicosia, Sibout Nooteboom, Dragan Okanovic, Charles R Paez, Julia
Poncela C., Francisco Rodrigues, Jorge P. Rodríguez, Iza Romanowska,
Pier Luigi Sacco, Joaquín Sanz, Samuel Scarpino, Alice Schwarze, Nasser
Sharareh, Keith Malcolm Smith, Ricard Sole, Keith Sonnanburg, Cédric
Sueur, Ali Sumner, Michael Szell, Ali Tareq, Adam Timlett, Ignacio
Toledo, Leo Torres, Paul van der Cingel, Ben van Lier, Jeffrey Ventrella,
Alessandro Vespignani, Joe Wasserman, Kristen Weiss, Daehan Won,
Phil Wood, Nicky Zachariou, Mengsen Zhang, Arshi, Brewingsense,
Complexity Space Consulting, Raoul, Systems Innovation, The NoDE Lab.
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Serafina Agnello
Version 1.0 (13rd of May 2019)
