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complexity |
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complexity, in science, field of study devoted to the process of self-organization. The basic concept of complexity is that all things tend to organize themselves into patterns, e.g., ant colonies, immune systems, and human cultures; further, they go through cycles of growth, mass extinction, regeneration, and evolution. Complexity looks for the mathematical equations that describe the middle ground between equilibrium (see statics statics, branch of mechanics concerned with the maintenance of equilibrium in bodies by the interaction of forces upon them (see force). It incorporates the study of the center of gravity (see center of mass) and the moment of inertia.
..... Click the link for more information. ) and chaos (see chaos theory chaos theory, in mathematics, physics, and other fields, a set of ideas that attempts to reveal structure in aperiodic, unpredictable dynamic systems such as cloud formation or the fluctuation of biological populations. ..... Click the link for more information. ), such as the interplay between supply and demand in an economy or the relationship among living organisms in an ecosystem. Complexity theory had its beginnings with American mathematician Norbert Wiener's Wiener, Norbert, 1894–1964, American mathematician, educator, and founder of the field of cybernetics, b. Columbia, Mo., grad. Tufts College, 1909, Ph.D. Harvard, 1913. BibliographySee M. M. Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992); R. Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (1993); J. H. Holland, Hidden Order (1995). complexity [kəm′plek·səd·ē] (computer science) The number of elementary operations used by a program or algorithm to accomplish a given task.
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