Complex Adaptive Systems

Author: John H. Miller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400835526
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
This book provides the first clear, comprehensive, and accessible account of complex adaptive social systems, by two of the field's leading authorities. Such systems--whether political parties, stock markets, or ant colonies--present some of the most intriguing theoretical and practical challenges confronting the social sciences. Engagingly written, and balancing technical detail with intuitive explanations, Complex Adaptive Systems focuses on the key tools and ideas that have emerged in the field since the mid-1990s, as well as the techniques needed to investigate such systems. It provides a detailed introduction to concepts such as emergence, self-organized criticality, automata, networks, diversity, adaptation, and feedback. It also demonstrates how complex adaptive systems can be explored using methods ranging from mathematics to computational models of adaptive agents. John Miller and Scott Page show how to combine ideas from economics, political science, biology, physics, and computer science to illuminate topics in organization, adaptation, decentralization, and robustness. They also demonstrate how the usual extremes used in modeling can be fruitfully transcended.

Signals and Boundaries

Author: John H. Holland
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262017830
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
An overarching framework for comparing and steering complex adaptive systems is developed through understanding the mechanisms that generate their intricate signal/boundary hierarchies.

Complex Adaptive Systems

Author: Ted Carmichael
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030203093
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
This book emerged out of international conferences organized as part of the AAAI Fall Symposia series, and the Swarmfest 2017 conference. It brings together researchers from diverse fields studying these complex systems using CAS and agent-based modeling tools and techniques. In the past, the knowledge gained in each domain has largely remained exclusive to that domain. By bringing together scholars who study these phenomena, the book takes knowledge from one domain to provide insight into others. Most interesting phenomena in natural and social systems include constant transitions and oscillations among their various phases – wars, companies, societies, markets, and humans rarely stay in a stable, predictable state for long. Randomness, power laws, and human behavior ensure that the future is both unknown and challenging. How do events unfold? When do they take hold? Why do some initial events cause an avalanche while others do not? What characterizes these events? What are the thresholds that differentiate a sea change from a non-event? Complex adaptive systems (CAS) have proven to be a powerful tool for exploring these and other related phenomena. The authors characterize a general CAS model as having a large number of self-similar agents that: 1) utilize one or more levels of feedback; 2) exhibit emergent properties and self-organization; and 3) produce non-linear dynamic behavior. Advances in modeling and computing technology have led not only to a deeper understanding of complex systems in many areas, but they have also raised the possibility that similar fundamental principles may be at work across these systems, even though the underlying principles may manifest themselves differently.

Complexity

Author: John Henry Holland
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199662541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Book Description
In this very short introduction, John Holland presents an introduction to the science of complexity. Using examples from biology and economics, he shows how complexity science models the behaviour of complex systems.

Social Sustainability, Past and Future

Author: Sander van der Leeuw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

Book Description
A novel, integrated approach to understanding long-term human history, viewing it as the long-term evolution of human information-processing. This title is also available as Open Access.

The Mind, The Brain And Complex Adaptive Systems

Author: Harold J. Morowitz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429972393
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
Based upon a conference held in May 1993, this book discusses the intersection of neurobiology, cognitive psychology and computational approaches to cognition.

Adaptive Action

Author: Glenda H. Eoyang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804785406
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
Rooted in the study of chaos and complexity, Adaptive Action introduces a simple, common sense process that will guide you and your organization into reflective action. This elegant method prompts readers to engage with three deceptively simple questions: What? So what? Now what? The first leads to careful observation. The second invites you to thoughtfully consider options and implications. The third ignites effective action. Together, these questions and the tools that support them produce a dynamic and creative dance with uncertainty. The road-tested steps of adaptive action can be used to devise solutions and improve performance across multiple challenges, and they have proven to be scalable from individuals to work groups, from organizations to communities. In addition to laying out the adaptive action framework and clear protocols to support it, Glenda H. Eoyang and Royce J. Holladay introduce best practices from exemplary professionals who have used adaptive action to meet personal, professional, and political challenges in leadership, consulting, Alzheimer's treatment, evaluation, education reform, political advocacy, and cultural engagement—readying readers to employ this new toolkit to meet their own goals with a sense of ingenuity and flexibility.

Managing Forests as Complex Adaptive Systems

Author: Christian Messier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136335218
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
This book links the emerging concepts of complexity, complex adaptive system (CAS) and resilience to forest ecology and management. It explores how these concepts can be applied in various forest biomes of the world with their different ecological, economic and social settings, and history. Individual chapters stress different elements of these concepts based on the specific setting and expertise of the authors. Regions and authors have been selected to cover a diversity of viewpoints and emphases, from silviculture and natural forests to forest restoration, and from boreal to tropical forests. The chapters show that there is no single generally applicable approach to forest management that applies to all settings. The first set of chapters provides a global overview of how complexity, CAS and resilience theory can benefit researchers who study forest ecosystems. A second set of chapters provides guidance for managers in understanding how these concepts can help them to facilitate forest ecosystem change and renewal (adapt or self-organize) in the face of global change while still delivering the goods and services desired by humans. The book takes a broad approach by covering a variety of forest biomes and the full range of management goals from timber production to forest restoration to promote the maintenance of biodiversity, quality of water, or carbon storage.

Language as a Complex Adaptive System

Author: Nick C. Ellis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 144433400X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Explores a new approach to studying language as a complex adaptive system, illustrating its commonalities across many areas of language research Brings together a team of leading researchers in linguistics, psychology, and complex systems to discuss the groundbreaking significance of this perspective for their work Illustrates its application across a variety of subfields, including languages usage, language evolution, language structure, and first and second language acquisition "What a breath of fresh air! As interesting a collection of papers as you are likely to find on the evolution, learning, and use of language from the point of view of both cognitive underpinnings and communicative functions." Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Intelligent Complex Adaptive Systems

Author: Yang, Ang
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1599047195
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description
"This book explores the foundation, history, and theory of intelligent adaptive systems, providing a fundamental resource on topics such as the emergence of intelligent adaptive systems in social sciences, biologically inspired artificial social systems, sensory information processing, as well as the conceptual and methodological issues and approaches to intelligent adaptive systems"--Provided by publisher.