Description
The essential points of this ?rst chapter are * The de?nition of a complex system * The notion of emergence * The de?nition of a model * The notion of dynamical system This book is about the dynamics of complex systems.
Roughly speaking, a system is a collection of interacting elements making up a whole such as, for instance, a mechanical clock.
While many systems may be quite complicated, they are not necessarily considered to be complex.
Today, most authors agree on the essential properties a system has to possess to be called complex.
The ?rst section is devoted to the description of these properties.
To interpret the time evolution of a system, scientists build up models, which are simpli?ed mathematical representations of the system.
The exact purpose of a model and what its essential features should be is explained in the second section.
The mathematical models that will be discussed in this book are dynami- 1 calsystems.
A dynamical system is essentially a set of equations whose- lutiondescribesthe evolution,asafunction oftime, ofthe state ofthe system.
There exist di?erent types of dynamical systems. Some of them are de?ned in the third section. 1 There is an extensive literature on mathematical modeling.
The reader may, for example, consult [11,88,163,233].
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- Publisher:Springer New York
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Information
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Download - Immediately Available
- Format:PDF
- Publisher:Springer New York
- Publication Date:09/09/2010
- Category:
- ISBN:9781441965622
