Comments on: That Old Time Complexity

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:02:18 +0000

My paycheck comes from the New England Complex Systems Institute, so I'm doubtlessly biased in this, but I think there's a good argument to be made that what we call "complex systems" did not exist as a field until 1999. The one thing which everybody agrees is part of "complex systems study" is the investigation of networks, and the modern approach to networks got kick-started by the Barabasi-Albert model of preferential attachment. This was a re-discovery, as so many things are, but it brought an idea forth at just the time when large-throughput data collection made that idea applicable to real problems.

By: Dave Bacon

Dave Bacon — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:06:56 +0000

Complexity as a field, it seems to me, is a lot more mature than the hyped field which had hits hayday following the publication of "Chaos." (In other words the backlash was merited, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some core ideas which are now forming the basis of very solid research.) Interestingly one of the big NSF programs being rolled out this year, Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) has one of its three prongs square in the "complexity" setting:

Understanding Complexity in Natural, Built, and Social Systems: deriving fundamental insights on systems comprising multiple interacting elements;