Sounds like us, huh?

Characteristics of Complex Adaptive Systems

Complex adaptive systems are characterized as follows and the most important are:

The number of elements is sufficiently large that conventional descriptions (e.g. a system of differential equations) are not only impractical, but cease to assist in understanding the system, the elements also have to interact and the interaction must be dynamic. Interactions can be physical or involve the exchange of information.

Such interactions are rich, i.e. any element in the system is affected and affects several other systems.

The interactions are non-linear which means that small causes can have large results.

Interactions are primarily but not exclusively with immediate neighbours and the nature of the influence is modulated.

Any interaction can feed back onto itself directly or after a number of intervening stages, such feedback can vary in quality. This is known as recurrency.

Such systems are open and it may be difficult or impossible to define system boundaries.

Complex systems operate under far from equilibrium conditions, there has to be a constant flow of energy to maintain the organization of the system.

All complex systems have a history, they evolve and their past is co-responsible for their present behaviour.

Elements in the system are ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole, responding only to what is available to it locally.

The standard model of particle physics implies that there is a "Higgs field" that permeates all space. This field interacts with particles, and does so with varying strengths. Particles that interact more strongly experience more resistance to their motion and appear heavier. Some particles, such as photons, do not interact with the field at all and remain massless.

In this way, the mass of everything is determined by the existence of the field, and mass is an accident of our circumstances because we exist in a universe in which such a background field happens to have arisen.