Systems Science : CRC Press : 9781439895511 : 1439895511 : 09 Nov 2012 : "Preface It was in the year 1978 when Mr. Chi Xu published his head-turning reportage, entitled The Goldbach Conjecture, that Chinese people with great national enthusiasm learned about Jingrun Chen, a mathematician, and his life-long attempt to prove the problem of 1 + 1 = 2, a shining star on the mathematical crown. However, as of the present day, the public is still not adequately acquainted with systems science and the fundamental idea behind 1 + 1 > 2. Within the landscape of modern science, at the same time when disciplines are further and further refined and narrowed, interdisciplinary studies appear in abundance. As science further develops and human understanding of nature deepens, it is discovered that many systems interact nonlinearly with each other and do not satisfy the property of additivity. Their emergent irreversibility and sensitivity cannot be analyzed and understood by using the methodology of