Flocking
LiveThree local rules, no leader — a flock self-organizes and a coherent whole emerges.
Reynolds, “Flocks, Herds and Schools” (1987) ↗Complex systems · the models
The ideas, as live models
12 of the field's classic models, grouped by the behaviour they reveal. Each is a real simulation, hand-coded from the model's own published algorithm (cited below) — nothing is a looping video, and none is adapted from anyone else's code. Open one, change something, watch what it does.
Emergence & self-organization
Order that no one designs — produced entirely by local interaction.
Chaos & nonlinearity
Deterministic systems that are nonetheless unpredictable in practice.
Pattern formation
How structure — spots, stripes, mazes — arises in a uniform medium.
Order, coupling & phase transitions
How a system flips, all at once, between disordered and ordered states.
Criticality & networks
Systems poised at the edge of stability, and how connectivity tips over.
Feedback & memory
How loops amplify, and how a dynamical system can store and recall.