Global warming, biodiversity, water security, migration and many other challenges of the 21st century urges us to shift from the traditional disciplinary thinking to an integrative thinking about complex issues of nature and society. Complex systems science is a research field devoted to this new way of thinking.

Dezső Boda’s book Complexity in Nature and Society – From Dancing Molecules to Collapsing Societies offers an original and sophisticated introduction to the machinery of complex systems science and an extensive overview of its application. The book starts with a lucid introduction to the key concepts of the field such as emergence, self-organization, adaptation, etc.; and continues with a brief guide to the methodology of complex systems science borrowed from statistical physics. In short, one tackles complex macrolevel phenomena as emerging from an underlying microscopic level regulated by various dynamical rules. In the next two chapters the author covers a wide range of topics in biology and the social sciences (animal societies, brain, memes, language, cultural evolution, etc.) highlighting how indispensable complex systems science is in understanding the complex world surrounding us.
Although written for students and lay-readers with little or no scientific background, the book is also highly recommended for specialists.

Book recommendation video with the author, Dezső Boda physicist, researcher of iASK (with English subtitle):

Table of Contents

2020

ISBN: 978-615-5742-19-4

170 pages

Price: 2900 HUF

Order from the Publisher: click on this LINK. Postage equivalent to the sum of current postage rate is to be paid by the customer.

If you would like to order online, the book is also available here. (The website is in Hungarian only.)