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A complex adaptive system is a system in which a perfect understanding of the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior. In complex adaptive systems, the whole is more complex than its parts, and more complicated and meaningful than the aggregate of its parts. The study of complex adaptive systems, a subset of nonlinear dynamical systems, is highly interdisciplinary and blends insights from the natural and social sciences to develop system-level models and insights that allow for heterogeneous agents, phase transition, and emergent behavior.

They are complex in that they are dynamic networks of interactions, and their relationships are not aggregations of the individual static entities, i.e., the behavior of the ensemble is not predicted by the behavior of the components. They are adaptive in that the individual and collective behavior mutate and self-organize corresponding to the change-initiating micro-event or collection of events. They are a "complex macroscopic collection" of relatively "similar and partially connected micro-structures" formed in order to adapt to the changing environment and increase their survivability as a macro-structure. The Complex Adaptive Systems approach builds on replicator dynamics.

The term complex adaptive system was coined in 1968 by sociologist Walter F. Buckley who proposed a model of cultural evolution which regards psychological and socio-cultural systems as analogous with biological species. In the modern context, complex adaptive system is either directly linked to memetics, or proposed as a more viable reformulation to replace the memetic concept.

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