Global warming, biodiversity, water security, migration, and many other challenges of the 21st century urge us to shift from traditional disciplinary thinking to 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 macro-level 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.