Complexity, Criticality and Computation (C³)

Dear Colleagues,

Complex systems is a new approach to science and engineering that studies how relationships between parts give rise to collective emergent behaviours of the entire system, and how the system interacts with its environment.

Dynamics of a complex system cannot be predicted, or explained, as a linear aggregation of the individual dynamics of its components, and the interactions among the many constituent microscopic parts bring about synergistic macroscopic phenomena that cannot be understood by considering any single part alone. There is a growing awareness that complexity is strongly related to criticality: The behaviour of dynamical spatiotemporal systems at an order/disorder phase transition where scale invariance prevails.

Complex systems can also be viewed as distributed information-processing systems, in the domains ranging from systems biology and artificial life, to computational neuroscience, to digital circuitry, to transport networks. Consciousness emerging from neuronal activity and interactions, cell behaviour resultant from gene regulatory networks and swarming behaviour are all examples of global system behaviour emerging as a result of the local interactions of the individuals (neurons, genes, animals). Can these interactions be seen as a generic computational process? This question shapes the third component of our Special Issue, linking computation to complexity and criticality.

Prof. Mikhail Prokopenko
Guest Editor

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