The Challenge of Complex Systems

Abstract

The aim of this book is to develop concepts and methods which allow us to deal with complex systems from a unifying point of view. The book is composed of two parts: The introductory chapter deals with complex systems in a qualitative fashion, while the rest of the book is devoted to quantitative methods. In Chap. 1 we shall present examples of complex systems and some typical approaches to dealing with them, for instance thermodynamics and synergetics. We shall discuss the concept of self-organization and, in particular, various aspects of information. The last section of this chapter gives an outline of our new theory, which may be viewed as a macroscopic approach to synergetics. In Chap. 2 a brief outline of the microscopic approach to synergetics is presented, while Chap. 3 provides the reader with an introduction to the maximum information entropy principle, which will play an important role in our book. Chapter 4 illustrates this principle by applying it to thermodynamics.