Luís A. Nunes Amaral

Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
Professor of Medicine (by courtesy)
Professor of Molecular Biosciences (by courtesy)
Professor of Physics & Astronomy (by courtesy)

Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
2145 Sheridan Road (Room M426)
Evanston, IL 60208, US
Phone: +1 847-491-7850

Scale invariance and universality: organizing principles in complex systems

Stanley, HE, Amaral, LAN, Gopikrishnan, P, Ivanov, PC, Keitt, TH, Plerou, V
Physica A 281, 60-68 (2000)
Times cited: 56

Abstract

This paper is a brief summary of a talk that was designed to address the question of whether two of the pillars of the field of phase transitions and critical phenomena - scale invariance and universally - can be useful in guiding research on a broad class of complex phenomena. We shall see that while scale invariance has been tested for many years, universality is relatively more rarely discussed. In particular, we shall develop a heuristic argument that serves to make more plausible the universality hypothesis in both thermal critical phenomena and percolation phenomena, and suggest that this argument could be developed into a possible coherent approach to understanding the ubiquity of scale invariance and universality in a wide range of complex systems. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.