Theoretical Issues on Systems Science

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of systems has been elaborated across almost all disciplinary fields, which allows for interdisciplinary approaches. Research on complex systems has focused, for instance, on models and simulations of processes of emergence, self-organization, and chaos theory. The studies on complexity have opened the way towards a Second-Generation General System Theory, as in:

1. Minati, G., Pessa, E., and Licata, I., (eds.), 2017, Second Generation General System Theory: Perspectives in Philosophy and Approaches in Complex Systems. MDPI, Switzerland http://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/book/325
2. Minati, G., Pessa, E., and Licata, I., (eds.), 2014, Special Issue on Second Generation General System Theory, Systems, MDPI, Switzerland https://www.mdpi.com/journal/systems/special_issues/second-generation-general-system-theory

It is time to theoretically specify various new directions in systems science. The purpose of which is to find higher-level invariants in complex systems, their relations, and their roles in simulations.

Examples of the theoretical issues to be elaborated are:

1) Theoretical incompleteness:

The property of phenomena that are sufficiently incomplete permits the establishment of coherences in multiple equivalences of collective phenomena, allowing for the self-organization and emergence of complex systems.

2) Equivalences:

The incompleteness of multiplicity, identified as necessary for establishing the processes of emergence that would otherwise be blocked, reduced to predictable and computable outcomes, turning off multiplicities of equivalences, real engines of processes of emergence.

3) Multiplicities:

Multiplicity relates to the multiple roles of composing elements that act as simultaneous components of different systems and multiple networks, such as in ecosystems. Another case is the occurrence of multiple localized coherences. Furthermore, multiplicity relates to multiple modeling.

4) Quasi-systems:

Quasi-ness occurs when there are non-equivalent representations of the same system, i.e., a system is not always a system, not always the same system, and not only a system.

5) Tolerance:

As coherence replaces fixed structures in complex systems, versions of the ‘same’ systems may have a sufficient level of equivalence that are able to tolerate and survive structural changes, disappearances and re-appearances of significantly equivalent elements and interactions, and the introduction to new ones.

6) Re-emergence:

Occur in sequences of non-equivalent emergencies, such as the acquisition of defensive behaviors and swarm intelligence by collective systems after their temporary disappearance or disaggregation for any reason.

7) Pending systems:

Potential ‘superimposed’ multiple systems relate to pending, inactivated, implicit interactions waiting for suitable environmental conditions, e.g., energetics, to ‘collapse’ in the activation of one of the pending multiple systems underlying the role of weak forces in deciding new initial conditions and breaking equilibria. The subject may relate to virtual systems.

8) Logical openness:

Relating to the unlimited number of degrees of freedom given by non-completeness when the system is not deterministic or includes the environment that is, in principle, independent, thus making the system incomplete regarding the environmental influence.

9) Meta-structures:

Matter that assumes the mesoscopic level of representation, which involves examining structures and properties of and among clusters.

10) Quantum systems (quantum-like systems that never exhibited non-contextual behavior, have inseparable components, and allow for several different representations).

Examples of issues are:

• The meaning of causation in entangled quantum systems;
• The fact that some systems described by deterministic laws, to which it has been added a suitable stochastic ground noise, display behaviors identical to those of quantum systems, and the appearance of long-range correlations and collective effects.

11) Recurrence, self-reflexivity:

Intended as generative properties.

12) Remote synchronization:

Identifies a range of phenomena where two or more entities (nodes in a dynamical network) synchronize, despite the absence of links among them.

13) Chaos theory:

An example of theoretical issues are periodicities, self-similarity, strange attractors, topological invariants, topological mixing, and transitivity.

14) Complex numbers:

The physical meaning of the usage of imaginary variables that not only act as mathematical tricks. For instance, the so-called Fokker–Planck equation (FPE) has a form strongly resembling that of the Schrödinger equation used in quantum mechanics. The two can be made identical by introducing an imaginary time given by ? = i·t.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to review and introduce open theoretical systems issues, while considering their relations and related models.

Contributors are invited to present approaches, cases, models, proposals, and theoretical frameworks to deal with theoretical challenges.

Dr. Gianfranco Minati
Prof. Dr. Alessandro Giuliani
Dr. Andrea Roli
Guest Editors

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