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1 - Webs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2014

Bruce J. West  and
Paolo Grigolini
Bruce J. West
Affiliation:
Army Research Office
Paolo Grigolini
Affiliation:
University of North Texas
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Summary

The science of complex webs, also known as network science, is an exciting area of contemporary research, overarching the traditional scientific disciplines of biology, economics, physics, sociology and the other compartments of knowledge found in any college catalog. The transportation grids of planes, highways and railroads, the economic meshes of global finance and stock markets, the social webs of terrorism, governments, and businesses as well as churches, mosques, and synagogs, the physical lattices of telephones, the Internet, earthquakes, and global warming, in addition to the biological networks of gene regulation, the human body, clusters of neurons and food webs, share a number of apparently universal properties as the webs become increasingly complex. This conclusion is shared by the recent report Network Science [23] published under the auspices of the National Academy of Science. The terms networks and network science have become popular tags for these various areas of investigation, but we prefer the image of a web rather than the abstraction of a network, so we use the term web more often than the synonyms network, mesh, net, lattice, grille or fret. Colloquially, the term web entails the notion of entanglement that the name network does not share. Perhaps it is just the idea of the spider ensnaring its prey that appeals to our darker sides.

Whatever the intellectual material is called, this book is not about the research that has been done to understand complex webs, at least not in the sense of a monograph. We have attempted to put selected portions of that research into a pedagogic and often informal context, one that highlights the limitations of the more traditional descriptions of these areas. In this regard we are obligated to discuss the state of the art regarding a broad sweep of complex phenomena from a variety of academic disciplines. Sometimes properly setting the stage requires a historical approach and other times the historical view is replaced with personal perspectives, but with either approach we do not leave the reader alone to make sense of what can be difficult material. So we begin by illuminating the basic assumptions that often go unexamined in science.

Type
Chapter
Information
Complex Webs
Anticipating the Improbable
 , pp. 1 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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  • Webs
  • Bruce J. West, Paolo Grigolini, University of North Texas
  • Book: Complex Webs
  • Online publication: 05 July 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760419.002
Available formats
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  • Webs
  • Bruce J. West, Paolo Grigolini, University of North Texas
  • Book: Complex Webs
  • Online publication: 05 July 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760419.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Webs
  • Bruce J. West, Paolo Grigolini, University of North Texas
  • Book: Complex Webs
  • Online publication: 05 July 2014
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511760419.002
Available formats
×