Dynamics Of Complex Systems (Studies in Nonlinearity) (Paperback)

~ Yaneer Bar-yam (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The study of complex systems in a unified framework has become recognized in recent years as a new scientific discipline, the ultimate in the interdisciplinary fields. Breaking down the barriers between physics, chemistry, and biology and the so-called soft sciences of psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology, this text explores the universal physical and mathematical principles that govern the emergence of complex systems from simple components. Dynamics of Complex Systems is the first text describing the modern unified study of complex systems. It is designed for upper-undergraduate/beginning graduate level students, and covers a broad range of applications in a broad array of disciplines. A central goal of this text is to develop models and modeling techniques that are useful when applied to all complex systems. This is done by adopting both analytic tools, including statistical mechanics and stochastic dynamics, and computer simulation techniques, such as cellular automata and Monte Carlo. In four sets of paired, self-contained chapters, Yaneer Bar-Yam discusses complex systems in the context of neural networks, protein folding, living organisms, and finally, human civilization itself. He explores fundamental questions about the structure, dynamics, evolution, development and quantitative complexity that apply to all complex systems. In the first chapter, mathematical foundations such as iterative maps and chaos, probability theory and random walks, thermodynamics, information and computation theory, fractals and scaling, are reviewed to enable the text to be read by students and researchers with a variety of backgrounds.

About the Author

Yaneer Bar-Yam is President and founder of the New England Complex Systems Institute and visiting scholar in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (July 31, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813341213
• ISBN-13: 978-0813341217
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #640,782 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What happened with recent complexity?, June 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dynamics Of Complex Systems (Studies in Nonlinearity) (Hardcover)

This book is a big disappointment. In a 800- hundred pages volume one would expect to find the main ideas of the hot area of complexity. Most of the recent results obtained over the last 10 years are not there. Not a single word on criticality and scaling, modelling of random networks, the implications of critical phenomena to complexity, or the recent approaches to evolutionary dynamics. Even those problems already presented in other monographs (as pattern formation in biology) do not receive an adequate attention to those interested in complexity issues. Save your money.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent overview of the study of complex systems, July 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dynamics Of Complex Systems (Studies in Nonlinearity) (Hardcover)

This text provides an excellent introduction to the numerous and diverse techniques used in the study of complex systems. The field of complex systems emerged from a union of ideas from many seemingly disparate areas of research. Where many texts on complex systems speak to this union of ideas, Bar-Yam's text focuses on both the ideas and their implementation in the form of techniques and methods used in the study of these systems. These methodologies originate from many fields of research and several texts could be written about any single one; however I feel that the author has done an excellent job in choosing an important set of problems to present and the detail in which they are presented. This book is appropriate for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. I highly recommended it to my students in my course on complex systems, and if your interests coincide with the topics covered in this book, I highly recommend it to you.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How complicated are we?, April 3, 2005

By	Alwyn Scott (Tucson, Arizona USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dynamics Of Complex Systems (Studies in Nonlinearity) (Hardcover)

This book is designed as a text to introduce graduate students in science to the concepts and methods in the ``science of complexity'' which comprises studies in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology, and philosophy. Written from the perspectives of a physicist, definitions are informal; thus a concise definition of a complex system is not given. The concept of a complex system is introduced through examples, and informally described as having ``a large number of interacting parts'' although ``even a few interacting objects can behave in complex ways.'' More precisely, complexity is defined as ``the amount of information necessary to describe a system.'' Another key concept is the phenomenon of emergence which arises when ``the collective behavior [of a complex system] is not readily understood from the behavior of its parts.''

Dynamics of Complex Systems opens with a long chapter (278 pages) of ``introduction and preliminaries'' which surveys iterative maps; thermodynamics and statistical mechanics; activated processes (glasses); cellular automata; statistical fields; computer simulations; information theory; computation; and fractals, scaling and renormalization. It is suggested that this chapter can serve as the basis for a one-semester course. This introductory chapter is followed by eight chapters devoted two each to four different subjects: neural networks, protein folding, biological evolution, and human civilization. In each of these pairs of chapters, the first is more detailed and the second more general. Thus the first of the two chapters on neural networks describes neural network models (Hopfield's attactor models) whereas the second discusses the phenomenon of sleep and models of mind, with similar divisions of labor in the pairs of chapters on protein folding and on biological evolution. In the final chapter, it is noted that ``human civilization is more complex than we are as individuals.''

Alwyn Scott
http://personal.riverusers.com/~rover/