1. The Challenge of Complex Systems -- 2. From the Microscopic to the Macroscopic World -- 3. ... and Back Again: The Maximum Information Principle (MIP) -- 4. An Example from Physics: Thermodynamics -- 5. Application of the Maximum Information Principle to Self-Organizing Systems -- 6. The Maximum Information Principle for Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions: Determination of Order Parameters, Enslaved Modes, and Emerging Patterns -- 7. Information, Information Gain, and Efficiency of Self-Organizing Systems Close to Their Instability Points -- 8. Direct Determination of Lagrange Multipliers -- 9. Unbiased Modeling of Stochastic Processes: How to Guess Path Integrals, Fokker-Planck Equations and Langevin-Ito Equations -- 10. Application to Some Physical Systems -- 11. Transitions Between Behavioral Patterns in Biology, An Example: Hand Movements -- 12. Pattern Recognition. Unbiased Guesses of Processes: Explicit Determination of Lagrange Multipliers -- 13. Quantum Systems.

14. Concluding Remarks and Outlook.