User:Anthony.Sebastian/CAS

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'Complex adaptive systems' refer to numerous types of complex systems characterized by their ability to “change and reorganize their component parts to adapt themselves to the problems posed by their surroundings”, exploiting one or more of the many types of adaptation, including Darwinian natural selection.

Examples of complex adaptive systems include biological organisms, the immune system, economic systems, ant colonies, ecosystems, developing embryos, developing biological organ systems, computerized virtual species, social systems, the brain in function and development, the stock market, language.

Such complex adaptive systems comprise a self-organized system of interacting components (or agents) that can change and learn in an adaptive way, a way that enables them to persist, with modification, through indefinite time, despite changing environmental conditions, in particular conditions that put the system’s endurance at risk. Pioneer elucidator, John Holland, describes them as similar in the sense of having an “evolving structure”.