complex system
Many entangled parts
A complex system is a collection of interacting components whose combined behavior can't be predicted from the parts alone.
Weather, economies, ecosystems, and the human brain are complex systems—they exhibit emergent properties, feedback loops, and sensitivity to initial conditions.
The financial crisis showed how complex systems can fail in unexpected ways.
The study of complex systems draws from physics, biology, and computer science.
- nonlinearityDisproportionate cause and effect
- emergenceComing into existence
- chaos theoryStudy of sensitive dependence
- butterfly effectSmall inputs, disproportionate results
- dynamicsStudy of forces
biome · internet · self-organization · feedback loops · tipping points · tipping point · resilience · megalopolis · ecosystem · food web · adaptation · interdependence · bifurcation · phase transition · network · graph theory · economy · self-regulation
- dynamical systemsattractors, attractor, chaos theory, equilibria, fixed points
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