Interactions and Interaction Mechanisms as Generators of Complex Systems

Abstract

The concept of interaction is widely used in almost all disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts. However, such a concept is often used in simplistic ways. We concentrate on scientific aspects, particularly systemic, identifying fundamental conceptual issues and interdisciplinary extensions. For example, a process of interacting is usually considered to occur iteratively in the same way, except for parametric variations, between fixed pairs or entities when one’s behavior is assumed to depend on another’s behavior. This simplistic view then has effects on the models adopted. A more appropriate concept of interaction should include aspects such as the occurrence of variable interacting pairs, variable interactions, and multiple, in this case, clustered, pairs. Furthermore, their desynchronization, the occurrence of incomplete interactions; interchanging, the exchange of roles, the acquisition of multiple roles, passive interactions such as the maintenance of covariance and correlation, and the establishment of fields of interaction and their mutual influence should be included. The interaction observed-observer is considered here not as a perturbation but in reference to the cognitive expectancies of the observer. This is assuming stable validity of the same model and between the understanding by the active observer and the phenomenon that reacts to being treated as if it were what the observer had in mind. A more appropriate and comprehensive concept of interaction is required. This is particularly true in systems science when dealing with processes of self-organization and emergence, whose models are widely based on simplistic concepts of interaction. The usage of more appropriate representations, based, for instance, on clustering and networking, of interacting in models is expected to allow the implementation of approaches suitable to activate, deactivate, and vary interactions in complex systems, e.g., collective phenomena.