Complexity has become a central topic in certain sectors of theoretical physics and chemistry (for example, in connection with nonlinearity and deterministic chaos). Also, mathematical measurements of complexity and formal characterizations of this notion have been proposed. The question of how complex systems can show properties that are different from those of their constituent parts has nurtured philosophical debates about emergence and reductionism, which are particularly important in the study of the relationship between physics, chemistry, biology and psychology. This book offers a good presentation of those topics through a truly interdisciplinary approach in which the philosophy of science and the specialized topics of certain sciences are put in a dialogue.

The book highlights new trends and challenges in research on agents and the new digital and knowledge economy. It includes papers on business process management, agent-based modeling and simulation and anthropic-oriented computing that were originally presented at the 14th International KES Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2020), being held as a Virtual Conference in June 17–19, 2020. The respective papers cover topics such as software agents, multi-agent systems, agent modeling, mobile and cloud computing, big data analysis, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, social systems, computer embedded systems and nature inspired manufacturing, all of which contribute to the modern digital economy.

This book contains the extended and revised versions of selected papers from the 4th International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design, BMSD 2014, held in Luxembourg, Luxembourg, in June 2014. The symposium was organized and sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Institute for Collaboration and Research on Enterprise Systems and Technology (IICREST), in collaboration with the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor (TUDOR). Cooperating organizations were the Dutch Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), the UTwente Center for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT), and AMAKOTA Ltd. The 37 papers presented at BMSD 2014 were selected from 52 submissions. The seven papers published in this book were carefully reviewed, selected, revised, and extended from the presented papers. The selection considers a large number of BMSD-relevant research topics: from modeling and simulation-related subjects, such as declarative business rules, business (process) modeling, business process simulation, and information systems modeling, through architectures-related areas, such as impact analysis with regard to enterprise architectures and architectural principles for service cloud applications, to topics touching upon quality-of-service-aware service systems.

The unity of science has been a widely discussed issue both in the philosophy of science and within several sciences. Reductionism has often been seen as the means of bringing the different sciences to a fundamental unity by reference to some basic science, but it shows many limitations. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity have also been proposed as methodologies for attaining unity without underestimating the diversity of the sciences.This volume starts with a clarification of the possible meanings of this unity and then discusses the features of the mentioned approaches to unity, evaluating the success and the shortcomings of the unification programme among different sciences and within a single science.

The next generation of Business Process Management (BPM) methods and tools will support the development of a new generation of service-enabled applications that change and evolve over time. The trend is moving from relatively stable, organization-specific applications to dynamic ones supporting business processes. This book is an outcome of the International Workshop on Business System Management and Engineering (BSME 2010), held in Malaga, Spain, in June/July 2010, in conjunction with the TOOLS 2010 federated conferences and under the aegis of the EU Network of Excellence on Service Software and Systems (S-Cube). The goal of the workshop was to bring together experts in the fields of business process management, service-oriented architectures, and service security to discuss the current state of research and identify new issues, challenges, and research directions. The results of these discussions are reflected in this book.