Natural algorithms and influence systems

Algorithms offer a rich, expressive language for modelers of biological and social systems. They lay the grounds for numerical simulations and, crucially, provide a powerful framework for their analysis. The new area of natural algorithms may reprise in the life sciences the role differential equations have long played in the physical sciences. For this to happen, however, an "algorithmic calculus" is needed. We discuss what this program entails in the context of influence systems , a broad family of multiagent models arising in social dynamics.