Owen writes:
> A similar measure, as far as I know, is not available for
> description of Complex systems .. one that offers a solution
> to the inclusion principal for Complex processes.
There are a couple of useful measures that come to mind:
A measure to characterize the onset of complexity (ie when an applied external
gradient is greater than the internal degrees of freedom of a system) is the
dimensionless Reynolds number:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number
Correlation length is often a useful statistic to collect in describing phase
transitions in complex systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_length
Further borrowing from statistical mechanics, mean free path and mean relaxation
time are sometimes useful measures for phase transitions in complex systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_free_path
We showed phase transitions with these parameters in the ant foraging model in:
Gambhir, M., Guerin, S., Kauffman, S., Kunkle, D. (2004) Steps toward a possible
theory of organization. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Complex
Systems 2004. Boston, MA.
http://www.redfish.com/research/NECSI_StepsTowardPossibleOrganization_v0_8.pdf
and
Guerin, S. and Kunkle, D. (2004) Emergence of constraint in self-organizing
systems. Journal of Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, Vol. 8,
No. 2, April, 2004.
http://www.redfish.com/research/art0801-2_NDPLS_Article.pdf
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