Complex Systems: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey provides an overview of complex systems science, highlighting key themes, methods, and resources across various disciplines, emphasizing the progress made since the 1980s in understanding collective behaviors of interacting agents.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive summary of the main themes, methods, and resources in complex systems science, integrating insights from multiple disciplines and historical developments.

Findings

Progress in quantitative understanding since the 1980s

Integration of physics-based theory and computer simulation

Broad interdisciplinary approaches to complex systems

Abstract

A complex system is a system composed of many interacting parts, often called agents, which displays collective behavior that does not follow trivially from the behaviors of the individual parts. Examples include condensed matter systems, ecosystems, stock markets and economies, biological evolution, and indeed the whole of human society. Substantial progress has been made in the quantitative understanding of complex systems, particularly since the 1980s, using a combination of basic theory, much of it derived from physics, and computer simulation. The subject is a broad one, drawing on techniques and ideas from a wide range of areas. Here I give a survey of the main themes and methods of complex systems science and an annotated bibliography of resources, ranging from classic papers to recent books and reviews.