Complexity & Artificial Life Research Concept
From the site:
CALResCo was set up in 1996 to fulfil a perceived need on the Internet to integrate the information about Complex Systems, in all its various guises, and present it in a way useful to both beginners and those already familiar with one or more of the fields.
A very complete set of definitions on their Self-Organizing Systems FAQS page.
What is self-organization ?
a) The evolution of a system into an organized form in the absence of external pressures.
b) A move from a large region of state space to a persistent smaller one, under the control of the system itself. This smaller region of state space is called an attractor.
c) The introduction of correlations (pattern) over time or space for previously independent variables operating under local rules.
- Typical features include (in rough order of generality):
- Absence of external control (autonomy)
- Dynamic operation (time evolution)
- Fluctuations (noise/searches through options)
- Symmetry breaking (loss of freedom/heterogeneity)
- Global order (emergence from local interactions)
- Dissipation (energy usage/far-from-equilibrium)
- Instability (self-reinforcing choices/nonlinearity)
- Multiple equilibria (many possible attractors)
- Criticality (threshold effects/phase changes)
- Redundancy (insensitivity to damage)
- Self-maintenance (repair/reproduction metabolisms)
- Adaptation (functionality/tracking of external variations)
- Complexity (multiple concurrent values or objectives)
- Hierarchies (multiple nested self-organized levels)
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