Now I'm going to say something about
the core disciplines, the goals,
and the research methodologies that underlie
the science of complex systems.
What's to come is my own list;
but these are the things
that I think you need to know something about
if you want to more deeply understand
the research coming out of this field.
The first core discipline is dynamics,
which is the study of continually changing structure
and behavior of systems.
Another core discipline is information,
which studies representation, symbols,
and communication.
The discipline of computation provides insight into
how systems process information
and act on the results.
And finally, you need to know
something about evolution,
which includes the study of how systems adapt
to environments that change over time.
All of these fields are independent research areas,
but they're brought together
in the science of complexity.
Complex systems science has, to my mind at least,
two different goals.
Or perhaps I should say that different researchers
have different goals.
One major goal is the development of
mathematical and computational tools
that lead to cross-disciplinary insights.
For example, by studying the behavior
of ant colonies
as an instance of information processing,
we can ask how similar or different
that information processing is
to that done in a city.
Or, to what extent is the flow of information
in a brain network
similar to that in an economic network.
These kinds of cross-disciplinary insights are,
to date,
the greatest success of complex systems science.
We'll cover many of these in this course.
However, some complex systems researchers
have an even loftier goal:
the development of a general theory of complexity,
one that unites the previously disparate disciplines
that make up complex systems research.
This school is somewhat controversial
in the research community.
Many people don't think it's realistic,
or even possible;
but it remains a holy grail for some.
Throughout this course,
we'll hear from a number of complexity experts
about the prospects for such a theory,
and you'll probably hear lots of different opinions.
Finally, what methodologies
do complex systems scientists use in their work?
Well, here's our complex systems scientist.
As scientists,
people in the field of complex systems
do a combination of experimental work,
theoretical work, and, increasingly,
what's coming to be known
as the third scientific methodology;
that is, computer simulation.
In this course, we'll look at
all these kinds of methods
but we'll focus in particular
on computer simulation of complex systems.