Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T17:29:50.186Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Complex Adaptive Matter: Emergent Phenomena in Materials

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Daniel L. Cox  and
David Pines

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In the study of matter, both living and inanimate, the breakthrough discoveries and most scientists' intellectual obsessions often flow from what we call emergent behavior: phenomena not readily predictable from a detailed knowledge of the material subunits alone. We call systems that display emergent behavior complex adaptive matter, and their relevant organizing principles are unique to their scales of length and time. This issue of MRS Bulletin provides an overview of the aggregate of research on complex adaptive matter through a survey of five examples, ranging from intrinsically disordered electron matter in high-temperature superconductors to protein aggregates in amyloid diseases like Alzheimer's. We explain the philosophy and motivation for this research, noting that the study of emergent phenomena complements a globally reductionist scientific approach by seeking to identify, with intellectual precision, the relevant organizing principles governing the behavior. Our authors focus on the character of emergence for their particular systems, the role of materials research approaches to the problems, and the efforts to identify the organizing principles at work.

Keywords

complex adaptive matteremergent behavior
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Bulletin , Volume 30 , Issue 6: Complex Adaptive Matter: Emergent Phenomena in Materials , June 2005 , pp. 425 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2005

References

1.Anderson, P.W., Science 177 (1972) p. 393.Google Scholar
2.Laughlin, R.B., Pines, D., Schmalian, J., Stojkovic, B.P., and Wolynes, P., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 97 (2000) p. 32.Google Scholar
3.Laughlin, R.B. and Pines, D., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 97 (2000) p. 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. For an outstanding exposition of global reductionism, see Weinberg, S., Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage Press, New York, 1992).Google Scholar
5. For an outstanding exposition of the argument that science is making a transition from the “golden age of reductionism” to the “age of emergence,” see Laughlin, R.B., A Different Universe (Basic Books, New York, 2005).Google Scholar
6.Caswell, W.E. and LePage, G.P., Phys. Lett. 167B (1986) p. 437; J. Polchinski, “Effective Field Theory and the Fermi Surface,” http://arxiv.org e-print archive, hep-th/9210046 (1992; updated 1999; accessed March 2005).Google Scholar
7.Goedecker, S., Rev. Mod. Phys. 71 (1999) p. 1085.Google Scholar
8. For an overview of the CHARMM (Chemistry at HARvard Molecular Mechanics) program, see http://www.charmm.org/document/Charmm/Overview.Html (accessed March 2005.Google Scholar
9. For an overview of the AMBER (Assisted Model Building with Energy Refinement) program, see Pearlman, D.A., Case, D.A., Caldwell, J.W., Ross, W.R., Cheatham, T.E., DeBolt, S., Ferguson, D.M., Seibel, G., and Kollman, P.A., Comp. Phys. Commun. 91 (1995) p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10.Beck, D.A.C. and Daggett, V., Methods 34 (2004) p. 112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
11.Pande, V.S., Baker, I., Chapman, J., Elmer, S.P., Khaliq, S., Larson, S.M., Rhee, Y.M., Shirts, M.R., Snow, C.D., Sorin, E.J., and Zagrovic, B., Biopolymers 68 (2003) p. 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Wilson, K.G. and Kogut, J., Phys. Rep. 12 (1974) p. 75; K.G. Wilson, Rev. Mod. Phys. 47 (1975) p. 773.Google Scholar
13.Haruta, M., Yamada, N., Kobayashi, T., and Iijima, S., J. Catal. 115 (1989) p. 301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14.Moro, R., Xu, X.S., Yin, S.Y., and de Heer, W.A., Science 300 (2003) p. 1265.Google Scholar
15.McHale, J.M., Auroux, A., Perrotta, A.J., and Navrotsky, A., Science 277 (1997) p. 788.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16.Shankar, R., Rev. Mod. Phys. 66 (1994) p. 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17.Boebinger, G., Cox, D.L., Hurd, A.J., and Pines, D., MRS Bull. 29 (2004) p. 963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18.Mermin, N.D., Phys. Today 43 (1990) p. 9.Google Scholar