An Introduction to Complex Systems

Michel Morvan Rhne-Alpes Complex Systems Institute (IXXI)

ENS Lyon - EHESS - Santa Fe Institute

Complex system
!

Set of items interacting via simple local rules Emergence of global properties that cannot be directly deduced from the local rules
Predict Control Design

Complex ! complicated

Characteristics
! ! !

Heterogeneity Different time and space scales Local influences global and global influences local (retroaction)

Interdisciplinarity
!

The same questions appear from different fields Methods come from different fields

Examples
!

Natural
! ! ! !

Physical systems (in particular at the nano scale) Biological systems (cells, organisms,) Social systems Economical systems (financial markets,) ICT systems (Internet, grids, adhoc networks) Technical systems (cars, trains, planes,)

Artificial (design)
! !

Research in complex systems

!

From data to models to data Main goal: capture emergence Fundamental role played by simulation

One example : gene regulatory networks

Another example: evolution of criminality

Criminal Not criminal The more a non criminal has criminals among his/her friends, the more he/she risks to become a criminal and reciprocally How will evolve such a system? What can we learn from its dynamics?

Last example: Happyflu experiment

Structure and dynamics of large interaction networks

! ! !

Identification of particular sub-structures Study of the dynamics on these networks (fragility zones, robustness, etc.) Integration of such networks:
! ! !

Gene regulatory network Cells networks

The importance - and risk - of being simple

!

Using very simple models

! !

Gene regulatory network Criminality

But dont forget that you are only working on models, not on systems themselves

The example of sand falling

Very simple model!

6 4 3 3 1 1

Transition rule

6 4 3 3 1 1

6 4 3 3 1 1

We start from one column

15

20

And my favourite

How can (very) complex emerge from (very) simple ?

A very simple kind of system: cellular automata

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1

Transition rules

1 0

Cellular automata

Modelling a complex system

! ! !

Which entities, which states ? How are entities connected (topology) ? How does the system evolve? Which are the local transition rules? How is time running?

Two very important points

!

Robustness

Predictability

Robustness and fragility

!

A characteristics of complex systems

!

Very robust to a large amount of perturbations (leads to strong self organisation) Very fragile to a small set of perturbations (leads to unpredictability but also inderectly to adaptability)

These are the two sides of the same medal !

Predictability and unpredictability

!

Some behaviours are impossible to predict

! !

Sensitivity to initial conditions More deeply for structural reasons: no shortcuts exist to know how the system is going to behave
Theorems exist ! ! Even on (apparently) very simple systems
!

Why is it the good time now ?

! ! !

Huge amount of data in many fields Huge computer power Existence of many different kind of formal models The question appears to be crucial in many fields

Need for
! !

New methods The related computational tools

Importance of scalability

Importance of defining models for

!

Describing emergence Allowing the recognition and measure of emergence of aggregate behavior

Some of the grand challenges (in general of for specific objects)

! ! ! !

Reconstruction of multi-scale dynamics - micromacro and macro-micro functions Study of the transients of dynamical systems (and not only the attractors) Understand the importance of noise for stability Provide a framework for the study of spatiotemporal morphodynamics - the question of morphogenesis

We are at the begining of the story

! !

Many people from different fields A big amount of very hard and interesting questions
! !

Fundamental Applied

! !

Huge potential applications Work load for many years !

What about computer science in this landscape?

A ruler + a compass

General problem
!

A data A set of elementary operations A result

Questions of computer science

!

What can we compute (calculability) ? How long will it take (time complexity) ? How much space (space complexity) ?

Go back to our sand storm

A dynamics = A computation