It's not an exaggeration to say we live in a complex world, but the good news is that it doesn't always take complex or complicated theories to understand it. Because scientists in the 21st century work in a much more interdisciplinary way, as teams of specialists examining as a whole, rather than as specialists working in isolation, a lot of similar patterns or theories are starting to emerge. With the help of sophisticated computer modeling and shared data, scientists are finding simpler answers to very complex questions, than they previously thought. Mother nature, it seems is starting to give up some of her secrets, or we've just learning to ask the questions better, and like almost every aspect of nature, there is a duality or two ways of explaining most things. Complex theory, as it is called, looks at how very simple things can generate very complex outcomes that could not be guessed by just looking at the parts by themselves, and on the flip side, complexity theory looks at how complex systems can generate simple outcomes, first, we'll look at complex theory, you may have noticed the wonderful swirling patterns of birds flying together in the sky or fish schooling in the oceans. At first glance, we would think the birds would have to be rather intelligent to work out how to fly in formation like that, we would probably also assume there must be a bird in charge giving the others instructions, but research into this type of behavior known as swarms has shown that all is required is for each bird to maintain the distance between it and its neighbors and fly in the average direction of its neighbors. They seem to have built in radar, like what we usually associate bats as having, jet pilots have to set their flight patterns on their instruments, but it is instinctually built in for Canada geese, whether you are looking at a big migratory V in the sky or a school of fish on the Great Barrier Reef, what you see is complex, but the rules organizing it are relatively simple and just seem to emerge out of nowhere.
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