Networking the complexity community since 1999
The universe creatively sets the rules for its own becoming.
Stuart Kauffman is a theoretical biologist and leading complexity scientist who has argued that the self-organization of organisms is as influential in evolution as natural selection. His seminal book on the subject is “The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Natural Selection in Evolution” (1993). He spoke recently with Noema Editor-in-Chief Nathan Gardels.
Read the full article at: www.noemamag.com
Multilayer network science has emerged as a central framework for analysing interconnected and interdependent complex systems. Its relevance has grown substantially with the increasing availability of rich, heterogeneous data, which makes it possible to uncover and exploit the inherently multilayered organisation of many real-world networks. In this review, we summarise recent developments in the field. On the theoretical and methodological front, we outline core concepts and survey advances in community detection, dynamical processes, temporal networks, higher-order interactions, and machine-learning-based approaches. On the application side, we discuss progress across diverse domains, including interdependent infrastructures, spreading dynamics, computational social science, economic and financial systems, ecological and climate networks, science-of-science studies, network medicine, and network neuroscience. We conclude with a forward-looking perspective, emphasizing the need for standardised datasets and software, deeper integration of temporal and higher-order structures, and a transition toward genuinely predictive models of complex systems.
Read the full article at: academic.oup.com
Reda Benkirane
Complex Systems, 34(4), 2026 pp. 387–400.
Complexity, a term that is both ambiguous and multifaceted, is used widely today. Various legitimate definitions can be proposed for it, as is the case with “ample” notions such as intelligence, consciousness or culture. The recurrent mention of this term can be attributed to the transformation of our societies and their artifacts, as well as the acceleration of time brought by the digital revolution—a technological upheaval comparable to the invention of writing and the printing press.
Read the full article at: www.complex-systems.com
This initiative aims to identify and structure the foundational contributions that define complex systems, network science, and related domains, across theory, methods, and applications. The goal is to build a coherent, field-wide reference that reflects how the discipline is actually used and understood across different subdomains.
In recent years, large-scale models and automated systems have made it possible to synthesize vast amounts of scientific information. However, identifying what is foundational — what truly shapes the conceptual and methodological backbone of a field — still requires distributed expert judgment. This effort is designed to complement algorithmic approaches by leveraging collective intelligence: many independent perspectives, aggregated into a structured view.
The objective is not to produce a simple ranking of famous papers, but to build a structured map of the field’s foundations, including works that may be missing from keyword-based or citation-based approaches.
Read the full article at: manliodedomenico.com
Adam B. Barrett, Borjan Milinkovic, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas, Daniel Bor, Lionel Barnett, Anil K. Seth
The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) is uniquely ambitious in proposing a mathematical formula, derived from apparently fundamental properties of conscious experience, to describe the quantity and quality of consciousness for any physical system that possesses it. IIT has generated considerable debate, which has engendered some misunderstandings and misrepresentations. Here we address and hope to remedy this. We begin by concisely summarising the essentials of IIT. Given IIT is supposed to apply universally, we do this with reference to an arbitrary patch of matter, as opposed to the usual system of discrete computational units. Then, after briefly summarising IIT’s theoretical and empirical achievements, we focus on five points which we consider especially important for driving forward new theory and increasing understanding. First, a high value of the measure Φ is not synonymous with `more consciousness’. We describe how Φ might be replaced with a suite of quantities to obtain a multi-dimensional characterisation of states of consciousness. Second, we describe with nuance the distinct flavour of panpsychism implied by IIT — whereby space (and time) are tiled with substrates of (proto-) consciousness — and find this is not problematic for the theory. Third, Φ is not well-defined for real physical systems, and has not been computed on any real physical system. Fourth, so far only proxies for IIT measures have been computed, and not approximations. Fifth, for IIT to fit with current successful theories in fundamental physics, a reformulation in terms of continuous fields would be needed.
Read the full article at: arxiv.org
Complexity Digest 