More than the Sum of the Parts : Complexity in Physics and Beyond

Complexity is one of the most promising fields of modern science, and this book explores the new perspectives opening up when we consider systems made up of many similar or identical constituents.

From physics to information theory and cosmology, from the structure of animal societies to the linguistic analysis of human writing, systems consisting of many interacting constituents often show a collective behaviour not predictable from the interaction of the individual constituents. In More than the Sum of the Parts, Helmut Satz addresses different forms of this complex behaviour, which have been thoroughly investigated only in the past decades. Although these studies originate in physics, the behaviour is found to be universal, ranging from the structure of the early universe to the formation of flocks of birds, and to the frequency of words in literary texts. Complexity is thus becoming an increasingly important interdisciplinary field for future scientific research.In a conceptual and non-technical way, Satz opens up this exciting field for a general readership and those studying any field of the natural sciences.