Complexity science

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Complexity science is a branch of physics devoted to attacking the "complexity wall". This wall springs from an ongoing explosion of empirical data, giving detailed information about states of a system, including its (noisy) time evolution. The data results from spectacular advances in experimental techniques as well as information technology. Prime examples include high-throughput methods to define the regulatory dynamics of a cell, microtick data on agents' actions in markets or dynamic resource allocation in the internet, or even digital image sequences with high spatial and temporal resolution. Breaking through the complexity wall, and using this knowledge to better the human condition, depends upon improving methods to analyze micro-level data together with discovering high level, but falsifiable concepts that organize data and parametrize models in meaningful ways. This is precisely where methods, tools and models of statistical physics have proven indispensable as a part of efforts between specialists in different fields to solve today's outstanding problems.