This book explores the exciting new field of complexity. It features in-depth coverage of important theoretical areas, including fractals, chaos, nonlinear dynamics, artificial life, and self organization. It also provides overviews of complexity in several applied areas, including parallel computation, control systems, neural systems, and ecosystems. Contributors examine some of the properties that best characterize complex systems, including algorithmic richness, nonlinearity, and abundant interactions between components. In this way the book draws themes, especially the ideas of connectivity and natural computation, that reveal deep, underlying similarities among phenomena that have formerly been treated as completely distinct. Researchers in a wide array of fields, including ecology, neuroscience, computer science, and mathematics, will find this volume to be a fascinating collection of ideas.
Author(s): Bossomaier T.R.J., Green D.G. (eds.)
Publisher: CUP
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 420
Tags: Физика;Специальные разделы;
Cover......Page 1
Frontmatter......Page 2
Contents......Page 6
1 - Introduction......Page 8
2 - Self-organisation in complex systems......Page 18
3 - Network evolution and the emergence of structure......Page 58
4 - Artificial life: growing complex systems......Page 98
5 - Deterministic and random fractals......Page 134
6 - Non-linear dynamics......Page 174
7 - Non-linear control systems......Page 256
8 - Parallel computers and complex systems......Page 296
9 - Are ecosystems complex systems?......Page 346
10 - Complexity and neural networks......Page 374
Index......Page 414
