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The B-Z reaction underway...Recently, R. Frederick Ludlow and Sijbren Otto, both at Cambridge, published a paper in Chemical Society Reviews calling for a new type of chemistry. Titled Systems Chemistry, their approach "deals with the emergent properties of interacting chemical systems or networks. In other words, properties that result from the interaction between the components in a network, rather than any one species acting individually."
Systems Chemistry is a different way of looking at patterns that emerge in space and time because of the complex interplay among/between constituent reactants and reactions. (Not surprisingly, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is a canonical example of the complex results of a complex system.)
Complex chem systems are either under thermodynamic (equilibrium) or kinetic control.
The authors point out that chemical systems are good models for certain biological systems, and make a rather bold prediction:
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