Exploring Complexity

Unexpected discoveries in nonequilibrium physics and nonlinear dynamics are changing our understanding of complex phenomena. Recent research has revealed fundamental new properties of matter in far-from-equilibrium conditions, and the prevalence of instability-where small changes in initial conditions may lead to amplified effects.

Dive into Python's advanced possibilities, including algorithm analysis, graphs, scale-free networks, and cellular automata with this in-depth, hands-on guide.

The field of health is an increasingly complex and technical one; and an area in which a more multidisciplinary approach would undoubtedly be beneficial in many ways. This book presents papers from the conference ‘Health – Exploring Complexity: An Interdisciplinary Systems Approach’, held in Munich, Germany, from August 28th to September 2nd 2016. This joint conference unites the conferences of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS), the German Society for Epidemiology (DGEpi), the International Epidemiological Association - European Region, and the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI). These societies already have long-standing experience of integrating the disciplines of medical informatics, biometry, epidemiology and health data management. The book contains over 160 papers, and is divided into 14 sections covering subject areas such as: health and clinical information systems; eHealth and telemedicine; big data and advanced analytics; and evidence-based health informatics, evaluation and education, among many others. The book will be of value to all those working in the field of health and interested in finding new ways to enable the collaboration of different scientific disciplines and the establishment of comprehensive methodological approaches.

Coping with the complexities of the social world in the 21st century requires deeper quantitative and predictive understanding. Forty-three internationally acclaimed scientists and thinkers share their vision for complexity science in the next decade in this invaluable book. Topics cover how complexity and big data science could help society to tackle the great challenges ahead, and how the newly established Complexity Science Hub Vienna might be a facilitator on this path.Published in collaboration with Institute Para Limes.

Reflects recent developments in its emphasis on randomized and approximation algorithms and communication models All topics are considered from an algorithmic point of view stressing the implications for algorithm design

An analysis of two heuristic strategies for the development of mechanistic models, illustrated with historical examples from the life sciences. In Discovering Complexity, William Bechtel and Robert Richardson examine two heuristics that guided the development of mechanistic models in the life sciences: decomposition and localization. Drawing on historical cases from disciplines including cell biology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics, they identify a number of "choice points" that life scientists confront in developing mechanistic explanations and show how different choices result in divergent explanatory models. Describing decomposition as the attempt to differentiate functional and structural components of a system and localization as the assignment of responsibility for specific functions to specific structures, Bechtel and Richardson examine the usefulness of these heuristics as well as their fallibility—the sometimes false assumption underlying them that nature is significantly decomposable and hierarchically organized. When Discovering Complexity was originally published in 1993, few philosophers of science perceived the centrality of seeking mechanisms to explain phenomena in biology, relying instead on the model of nomological explanation advanced by the logical positivists (a model Bechtel and Richardson found to be utterly inapplicable to the examples from the life sciences in their study). Since then, mechanism and mechanistic explanation have become widely discussed. In a substantive new introduction to this MIT Press edition of their book, Bechtel and Richardson examine both philosophical and scientific developments in research on mechanistic models since 1993.

The Agency by Design guide to implementing maker-centered teaching and learning Maker-Centered Learning provides both a theoretical framework and practical resources for the educators, curriculum developers, librarians, administrators, and parents navigating this burgeoning field. Written by the expert team from the Agency by Design initiative at Harvard's Project Zero, this book Identifies a set of educational practices and ideas that define maker-centered learning, and introduces the focal concepts of maker empowerment and sensitivity to design. Shares cutting edge research that provides evidence of the benefits of maker-centered learning for students and education as a whole. Presents a clear Project Zero-based framework for maker-centered teaching and learning Includes valuable educator resources that can be applied in a variety of design and maker-centered learning environments Describes unique thinking routines that foster the primary maker capacities of looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity. A surge of voices from government, industry, and education have argued that, in order to equip the next generation for life and work in the decades ahead, it is vital to support maker-centered learning in various educational environments. Maker-Centered Learning provides insight into what that means, and offers tools and knowledge that can be applied anywhere that learning takes place.

Human society is no stranger to catastrophe, but the challenges the world faces today — a ballooning population, intense global connectivity and the unquenchable thirst of human consumption — have synergised to make disruptions more frequent, intense and far reaching.Despite the complexity of these problems, the response should not be to give up and surrender to these forces, the crash can be avoided. Humanity does possess the scientific, technological and social knowledge to not just survive, but also to emerge from the tumult by being more resilient and sustainable societies. The most urgent question, therefore, is how can we act on this knowledge.This book brings together 12 esteemed authors from diverse fields ranging from geology to governance, who have come together to collectively issue a unifying clarion call to action.Published in collaboration with Institute Para Limes.

Emergence, Complexity, and Self-Organization have become vital focuses of interest not only in the fields of science and philosophy but also in the wider worlds of business and politics. This book presents a series of essays by thinkers who anticipated the significance of those issues and laid the foundations for their current importance. Readers of this book will encounter the important and varied figures of Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, Charles Saunders Peirce, Henry Poincaré, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, and the British "Emergentists" Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan, and C. D. Broad. They will also find essays by the South African thinker and statesman Jan Smuts, the American philosopher Arthur Lovejoy, the eminent physicist Erwin Schrödinger, two more recent thinkers on emergence, P. E. Meehl and Wilfred Sellars, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy, one of the founders of General Systems Theory. In their detailed and comprehensive introduction to the collection, editors Alicia Juarrero and Carl A. Rubino set the essays in contexts stretching from Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel to some of the religious, scientific, and philosophical challenges we face today.

The new branch of science which will reveal how to avoid the rush hour, overcome cancer, and find the perfect date What do traffic jams, stock market crashes, and wars have in common? They are all explained using complexity, an unsolved puzzle that many researchers believe is the key to predicting - and ultimately solving - everything from terrorist attacks and pandemic viruses right down to rush hour traffic congestion. Complexity is considered by many to be the single most important scientific development since general relativity and promises to make sense of no less than the very heart of the Universe. Using it, scientists can find order emerging from seemingly random interactions of all kinds, from something as simple as flipping coins through to more challenging problems such as predicting shopping habits, the patterns in modern jazz, and the growth of cancer tumours.