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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Complex adaptive system | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:35:56.468479+00:00 | kb-cron |
Living organisms are complex adaptive systems. Although complexity is hard to quantify in biology, evolution has produced some remarkably complex organisms. This observation has led to the common misconception of evolution being progressive and leading towards what are viewed as "higher organisms". If this were generally true, evolution would possess an active trend towards complexity. As shown below, in this type of process the value of the most common amount of complexity would increase over time. Indeed, some artificial life simulations have suggested that the generation of CAS is an inescapable feature of evolution. However, the idea of a general trend towards complexity in evolution can also be explained through a passive process. This involves an increase in variance but the most common value, the mode, does not change. Thus, the maximum level of complexity increases over time, but only as an indirect product of there being more organisms in total. This type of random process is also called a bounded random walk. In this hypothesis, the apparent trend towards more complex organisms is an illusion resulting from concentrating on the small number of large, very complex organisms that inhabit the right-hand tail of the complexity distribution and ignoring simpler and much more common organisms. This passive model emphasizes that the overwhelming majority of species are microscopic prokaryotes, which comprise about half the world's biomass and constitute the vast majority of Earth's biodiversity. Therefore, simple life remains dominant on Earth, and complex life appears more diverse only because of sampling bias. If there is a lack of an overall trend towards complexity in biology, this would not preclude the existence of forces driving systems towards complexity in a subset of cases. These minor trends would be balanced by other evolutionary pressures that drive systems towards less complex states.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Literature ==
== External links ==
Complex Adaptive Systems Group loosely coupled group of scientists and software engineers interested in complex adaptive systems DNA Wales Research Group Current Research in Organisational change CAS/CES related news and free research data. Also linked to the Business Doctor & BBC documentary series A description of complex adaptive systems on the Principia Cybernetica Web. Quick reference single-page description of the 'world' of complexity and related ideas hosted by the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. Complex systems research network The Open Agent-Based Modeling Consortium TEDxRotterdam – Igor Nikolic – Complex adaptive systems, and The emergence of universal consciousness: Brendan Hughes at TEDxPretoria . Talks discussing various practical examples of complex adaptive systems, including Wikipedia, star galaxies, genetic mutation, and other examples