Introduction to Complexity and Complex Systems

The boundaries between simple and complicated, and complicated and complex system designations are fuzzy and debatable, even using quantitative measures of complexity. However, if you are a biomedical engineer, a biologist, physiologist, economist, politician, stock market speculator, or politician, you have encountered complex systems. Furthermore, your success depends on your ability to successfully interact with and manage a variety of complex systems. In order not to be blindsided by unexpected results, we need a systematic, comprehensive way of analyzing, modeling, and simulating complex systems to predict non-anticipated outcomes.

In its engaging first chapters, the book introduces complex systems, Campbell's Law, and the Law of Unintended Consequences, and mathematics necessary for conversations in complex systems. Subsequent chapters illustrate concepts via commonly studied biological mechanisms. The final chapters focus on higher-level complexity problems, and introduce complexity in economic systems.

Designed as a reference for biologists and biological engineers, Introduction to Complexity and Complex Systems lends itself to use in a classroom course to introduce advanced students studying biomedical engineering, biophysics, or physiology to complex systems. Engaging and illustrative, this book aids scientists and decision makers in managing biological complexity and complex systems.

Introduction to Complexity and Complex Systems. Introduction to Large Linear Systems. Introduction to Nonlinear Biochemical Systems and Biochemical Oscillators. Modularity, Redundancy, Degeneracy, Pleiotropy and Robustness in Complex Biological Systems. The Evolution of Biological Complexity; Invertebrate Immune Systems. The Complex Adaptive and Innate Human Immune Systems. Complexity in Quasispecies: MicroRNAs. Introduction to Physiological Complexity: Examples of Models of Some Complex Physiological Systems. The Quest for Quantitative Measures of Complexity. "Irreducible and Specified Complexity" in Living Systems. Introduction to Complexity in Economic Systems. Dealing with Complexity. Appendix. Bibliography and References. Glossary. Index.

Robert B. Northrop is Professor Emeritus and the former Program Director of the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Connecticut.