Systems chemistry: a web themed issue

摘要

Complex systems are all around us. Just think of the internet, the stock market, your own brain, human society etc. Such complex systems are more than just complicated; their complexity gives rise to many unique properties. Systems in which many different components interact with each other can give rise to emergent phenomena, which arise as a property of the system and cannot be ascribed to or predicted from the properties of any of the system's components acting in isolation. Examples include the whirlpool when you remove the plug from your bathtub, the behaviour of an ant colony and the formation of neighbourhoods in a large city.