16. Glossary

• Adaptation: Response of a complex system to a changing environment according to the conditions given by the fitness function
• Bifurcation: Qualitative change in the behavior of a dynamical system as certain parameters reach critical values
• Chaotic attractor: Behavioral set of non-linear dynamical systems that increases prediction errors exponentially with observation time.
• Complexity: Property of a system that consists of many subsystems that interact in a way that the behavior of the system is not evident from the properties of the subsystems.
• Discovery: The process of finding patterns and structures in new and interesting objects of understanding.
• Evolution: Adaptation of biological systems to changing environmental conditions.
• Fitness function: Function that maps complex systems to a value that determines its future abundance.
• Genetic algorithm: Computer algorithm that applies paradigms from biological evolution to machine learning.
• Innovation: Invention or discovery that leads to an improved fitness value for a complex system.
• Invention: Discovery that leads to the manifestation of a novel device or process.
• Learning: Persistent adaptation that can be generalized to future problems.
• Nonlinear dynamical system: System that changes lawfully with time and that cannot be described by linear evolution equations and therefor can exhibit bifurcations and chaotic attractors.
• Order parameter: Quantities that describe the time evolution of emergent, collective patterns of complex systems.
• Performance index: Example of a fitness parameter used in the context of learning.
• Time scale: Characteristic quantity of complex systems that are expressed as characteristic frequencies or rates.
• Utility: Example of a fitness parameter used in the context of economics.