Complex Systems in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Author: L. Douglas Kiel
Publisher:
Published: 2021-06-22
Total Pages: 448
ISBN-13: 9780472074884
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Complexity systems are at the heart of behavior
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Complex Systems in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Author: L. Douglas Kiel
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2021-06-22
Total Pages: 371
ISBN-13: 0472128922
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Complexity Systems in the Social and Behavioral Sciences provides a sophisticated yet accessible account of complexity science or complex systems research. Phenomena in the behavioral, social, and hard sciences all exhibit certain important similarities consistent with complex systems. These include the concept of emergence, sensitivity to initial conditions, and interactions between agents in a system that yield unanticipated, nonlinear outcomes. The topics discussed range from the implications for artificial intelligence and computing to questions about how to model complex systems through agent-based modeling, to complex phenomena exhibited in international relations, and in organizational behavior. This volume will be an invaluable addition for both the general reader and the specialist, offering new insights into this fascinating area of research.
Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems
Author: Paul K. Davis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2019-04-09
Total Pages: 992
ISBN-13: 1119484960
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume describes frontiers in social-behavioral modeling for contexts as diverse as national security, health, and on-line social gaming. Recent scientific and technological advances have created exciting opportunities for such improvements. However, the book also identifies crucial scientific, ethical, and cultural challenges to be met if social-behavioral modeling is to achieve its potential. Doing so will require new methods, data sources, and technology. The volume discusses these, including those needed to achieve and maintain high standards of ethics and privacy. The result should be a new generation of modeling that will advance science and, separately, aid decision-making on major social and security-related subjects despite the myriad uncertainties and complexities of social phenomena. Intended to be relatively comprehensive in scope, the volume balances theory-driven, data-driven, and hybrid approaches. The latter may be rapidly iterative, as when artificial-intelligence methods are coupled with theory-driven insights to build models that are sound, comprehensible and usable in new situations. With the intent of being a milestone document that sketches a research agenda for the next decade, the volume draws on the wisdom, ideas and suggestions of many noted researchers who draw in turn from anthropology, communications, complexity science, computer science, defense planning, economics, engineering, health systems, medicine, neuroscience, physics, political science, psychology, public policy and sociology. In brief, the volume discusses: Cutting-edge challenges and opportunities in modeling for social and behavioral science Special requirements for achieving high standards of privacy and ethics New approaches for developing theory while exploiting both empirical and computational data Issues of reproducibility, communication, explanation, and validation Special requirements for models intended to inform decision making about complex social systems
Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems
Author: Paul K. Davis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2019-03-13
Total Pages: 992
ISBN-13: 1119484987
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume describes frontiers in social-behavioral modeling for contexts as diverse as national security, health, and on-line social gaming. Recent scientific and technological advances have created exciting opportunities for such improvements. However, the book also identifies crucial scientific, ethical, and cultural challenges to be met if social-behavioral modeling is to achieve its potential. Doing so will require new methods, data sources, and technology. The volume discusses these, including those needed to achieve and maintain high standards of ethics and privacy. The result should be a new generation of modeling that will advance science and, separately, aid decision-making on major social and security-related subjects despite the myriad uncertainties and complexities of social phenomena. Intended to be relatively comprehensive in scope, the volume balances theory-driven, data-driven, and hybrid approaches. The latter may be rapidly iterative, as when artificial-intelligence methods are coupled with theory-driven insights to build models that are sound, comprehensible and usable in new situations. With the intent of being a milestone document that sketches a research agenda for the next decade, the volume draws on the wisdom, ideas and suggestions of many noted researchers who draw in turn from anthropology, communications, complexity science, computer science, defense planning, economics, engineering, health systems, medicine, neuroscience, physics, political science, psychology, public policy and sociology. In brief, the volume discusses: Cutting-edge challenges and opportunities in modeling for social and behavioral science Special requirements for achieving high standards of privacy and ethics New approaches for developing theory while exploiting both empirical and computational data Issues of reproducibility, communication, explanation, and validation Special requirements for models intended to inform decision making about complex social systems
Complex Social and Behavioral Systems
Author: Marilda Sotomayor
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2020-08-22
Total Pages: 939
ISBN-13: 9781071603697
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume in the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, Second Edition, combines the main features of Game Theory, covering most of the fundamental theoretical aspects under the cooperative and non-cooperative approaches, with the procedures of Agent-Based Modeling for studying complex systems composed of a large number of interacting entities with many degrees of freedom. In Game Theory, the cooperative approach focuses on the possible outcomes of the decision-makers’ interaction by abstracting from the "rational" actions or decisions that may lead to these outcomes. The non-cooperative approach focuses on the actions that the decision-makers can take. As John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern argued in their path-breaking book of 1944 entitled Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, most economic questions should be analyzed as games. The models of game theory are abstract representations of a number of real-life situations and have applications to economics, political science, computer science, evolutionary biology, social psychology, and law among others. Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) is a relatively new computational modeling paradigm which aims to construct the computational counterpart of a conceptual model of the system under study on the basis of discrete entities (i.e., the agent) with some properties and behavioral rules, and then to simulate them in a computer to mimic the real phenomena. Given the relative immaturity of this modeling paradigm, and the broad spectrum of disciplines in which it is applied, a clear cut and widely accepted definition of high level concepts of agents, environment, interactions and so on, is still lacking. This volume explores the state-of-the-art in the development of a real ABM ontology to address the epistemological issues related to this emerging paradigm for modeling complex systems.
Principles of Systems Science
Author: George E. Mobus
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2014-11-10
Total Pages: 782
ISBN-13: 1493919202
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This pioneering text provides a comprehensive introduction to systems structure, function, and modeling as applied in all fields of science and engineering. Systems understanding is increasingly recognized as a key to a more holistic education and greater problem solving skills, and is also reflected in the trend toward interdisciplinary approaches to research on complex phenomena. While the concepts and components of systems science will continue to be distributed throughout the various disciplines, undergraduate degree programs in systems science are also being developed, including at the authors’ own institutions. However, the subject is approached, systems science as a basis for understanding the components and drivers of phenomena at all scales should be viewed with the same importance as a traditional liberal arts education. Principles of Systems Science contains many graphs, illustrations, side bars, examples, and problems to enhance understanding. From basic principles of organization, complexity, abstract representations, and behavior (dynamics) to deeper aspects such as the relations between information, knowledge, computation, and system control, to higher order aspects such as auto-organization, emergence and evolution, the book provides an integrated perspective on the comprehensive nature of systems. It ends with practical aspects such as systems analysis, computer modeling, and systems engineering that demonstrate how the knowledge of systems can be used to solve problems in the real world. Each chapter is broken into parts beginning with qualitative descriptions that stand alone for students who have taken intermediate algebra. The second part presents quantitative descriptions that are based on pre-calculus and advanced algebra, providing a more formal treatment for students who have the necessary mathematical background. Numerous examples of systems from every realm of life, including the physical and biological sciences, humanities, social sciences, engineering, pre-med and pre-law, are based on the fundamental systems concepts of boundaries, components as subsystems, processes as flows of materials, energy, and messages, work accomplished, functions performed, hierarchical structures, and more. Understanding these basics enables further understanding both of how systems endure and how they may become increasingly complex and exhibit new properties or characteristics. Serves as a textbook for teaching systems fundamentals in any discipline or for use in an introductory course in systems science degree programs Addresses a wide range of audiences with different levels of mathematical sophistication Includes open-ended questions in special boxes intended to stimulate integrated thinking and class discussion Describes numerous examples of systems in science and society Captures the trend towards interdisciplinary research and problem solving
Social-Behavioral Modeling for Complex Systems
Author: Paul K. Davis
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2019-03-18
Total Pages: 881
ISBN-13: 1119484979
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume describes frontiers in social-behavioral modeling for contexts as diverse as national security, health, and on-line social gaming. Recent scientific and technological advances have created exciting opportunities for such improvements. However, the book also identifies crucial scientific, ethical, and cultural challenges to be met if social-behavioral modeling is to achieve its potential. Doing so will require new methods, data sources, and technology. The volume discusses these, including those needed to achieve and maintain high standards of ethics and privacy. The result should be a new generation of modeling that will advance science and, separately, aid decision-making on major social and security-related subjects despite the myriad uncertainties and complexities of social phenomena. Intended to be relatively comprehensive in scope, the volume balances theory-driven, data-driven, and hybrid approaches. The latter may be rapidly iterative, as when artificial-intelligence methods are coupled with theory-driven insights to build models that are sound, comprehensible and usable in new situations. With the intent of being a milestone document that sketches a research agenda for the next decade, the volume draws on the wisdom, ideas and suggestions of many noted researchers who draw in turn from anthropology, communications, complexity science, computer science, defense planning, economics, engineering, health systems, medicine, neuroscience, physics, political science, psychology, public policy and sociology. In brief, the volume discusses: Cutting-edge challenges and opportunities in modeling for social and behavioral science Special requirements for achieving high standards of privacy and ethics New approaches for developing theory while exploiting both empirical and computational data Issues of reproducibility, communication, explanation, and validation Special requirements for models intended to inform decision making about complex social systems
Nonlinear Dynamics in Complex Systems
Author: Armin Fuchs
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2012-09-22
Total Pages: 237
ISBN-13: 3642335527
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With many areas of science reaching across their boundaries and becoming more and more interdisciplinary, students and researchers in these fields are confronted with techniques and tools not covered by their particular education. Especially in the life- and neurosciences quantitative models based on nonlinear dynamics and complex systems are becoming as frequently implemented as traditional statistical analysis. Unfamiliarity with the terminology and rigorous mathematics may discourage many scientists to adopt these methods for their own work, even though such reluctance in most cases is not justified. This book bridges this gap by introducing the procedures and methods used for analyzing nonlinear dynamical systems. In Part I, the concepts of fixed points, phase space, stability and transitions, among others, are discussed in great detail and implemented on the basis of example elementary systems. Part II is devoted to specific, non-trivial applications: coordination of human limb movement (Haken-Kelso-Bunz model), self-organization and pattern formation in complex systems (Synergetics), and models of dynamical properties of neurons (Hodgkin-Huxley, Fitzhugh-Nagumo and Hindmarsh-Rose). Part III may serve as a refresher and companion of some mathematical basics that have been forgotten or were not covered in basic math courses. Finally, the appendix contains an explicit derivation and basic numerical methods together with some programming examples as well as solutions to the exercises provided at the end of certain chapters. Throughout this book all derivations are as detailed and explicit as possible, and everybody with some knowledge of calculus should be able to extract meaningful guidance follow and apply the methods of nonlinear dynamics to their own work. “This book is a masterful treatment, one might even say a gift, to the interdisciplinary scientist of the future.” “With the authoritative voice of a genuine practitioner, Fuchs is a master teacher of how to handle complex dynamical systems.” “What I find beautiful in this book is its clarity, the clear definition of terms, every step explained simply and systematically.” (J.A.Scott Kelso, excerpts from the foreword)
Systems Research for Behavioral Science
Author: Walter Buckley
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-12
Total Pages: 1017
ISBN-13: 1351487205
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Systems Research for Behavioral Science will be of interest to those in any discipline concerned with developments in science. It is addressed principally to the student of human behavior as that study is approached from the social side.Previously, the study of human behavior was the general area of science that had been slowest to respond to the exciting challenge of the modern systems outlook. Yet it is behavioral science that stands to gain the most from insights into the workings of more complex systems. The editor presents not only a fair selection of systems research in behavioral science, but also provides an extensive selection of important statements of general principles, including several already considered classics. Hence, this sourcebook may function in part as a principles text, exposing the initiate to original pioneering statements as well as later work inspired by them, and alerting the sizeable number of underexposed scholars who are over-familiar with the few terms such as feedback, boundary, input, and output, that there are much greater depths to plumb than meet the eye in semi-popular accounts of cybernetics. This volume is an overview of thinking that reflects a trend toward the system point of view. Some of the chapters are philosophical: they discuss the significance of the trend as a development in the contemporary philosophy of science. Some are inevitably detailed and technical. Still other chapters discuss the relevance of concepts that are central in the system approach, to particular fields of research. The picture that emerges is far from that of a unified theory. It is an open question whether much progress can be made by attempts to construct a "unified theory of systems" on some rigorous axiomatic base.
Why Society is a Complex Matter
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2012-06-09
Total Pages: 71
ISBN-13: 3642290000
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Society is complicated. But this book argues that this does not place it beyond the reach of a science that can help to explain and perhaps even to predict social behaviour. As a system made up of many interacting agents – people, groups, institutions and governments, as well as physical and technological structures such as roads and computer networks – society can be regarded as a complex system. In recent years, scientists have made great progress in understanding how such complex systems operate, ranging from animal populations to earthquakes and weather. These systems show behaviours that cannot be predicted or intuited by focusing on the individual components, but which emerge spontaneously as a consequence of their interactions: they are said to be ‘self-organized’. Attempts to direct or manage such emergent properties generally reveal that ‘top-down’ approaches, which try to dictate a particular outcome, are ineffectual, and that what is needed instead is a ‘bottom-up’ approach that aims to guide self-organization towards desirable states. This book shows how some of these ideas from the science of complexity can be applied to the study and management of social phenomena, including traffic flow, economic markets, opinion formation and the growth and structure of cities. Building on these successes, the book argues that the complex-systems view of the social sciences has now matured sufficiently for it to be possible, desirable and perhaps essential to attempt a grander objective: to integrate these efforts into a unified scheme for studying, understanding and ultimately predicting what happens in the world we have made. Such a scheme would require the mobilization and collaboration of many different research communities, and would allow society and its interactions with the physical environment to be explored through realistic models and large-scale data collection and analysis. It should enable us to find new and effective solutions to major global problems such as conflict, disease, financial instability, environmental despoliation and poverty, while avoiding unintended policy consequences. It could give us the foresight to anticipate and ameliorate crises, and to begin tackling some of the most intractable problems of the twenty-first century.
