The storyteller makes no choice

soon you will not hear his voice

his job is to shed light

and not to master,

Hunter/Garcia Terrapin Station

I first became interested in things which just did not fit into my real world experience when I discovered, whilst quite young, that the weather forecast was not always correct in it's predictions. In Britain, talking about the weather as per Kate Fox, is an entry into conversation between strangers.

My passion was science and in particular, Astronomy, and I found the history of the subject fascinating.

Jump ahead a few years and I read for my first degree, in Economics. I found that the subject, based on the concept of rationality, did not match the facts and I found it hard to agree with Milton Friedman about the realism of models when the main purpose was predictability. I was skeptical too, of the economists claims to have some insight into policy either in terms of the National Plan, or the imposition of taxes such as sin taxes. My skepticism was not supported by the intellectual tools in my arsenal until a paper by Hayek entitled "The Use of Knowledge in Society" alerted me to a new way of thinking about economics which caused me to rethink my notion of economics as science into one of process. Going back to first principles of Adam Smith and before, I became more uncomfortable about contemporary economics and in particular the notion of equilibrium. Reading Adam Ferguson led me to rethink again about so-called economic actors and the notion of spontaneous orders.

A television show in Britain on Chaos and Anti-Chaos, prompted me to investigate further. Partly due to Geoff Hodgson's works on institutionalism and reading Darwin as well as behaviouralist authors I came across ideas of Gaia and thence to Chaos by Gleick. Almost to the present when I settled down to read this wonderful book, little did I realize this at the time.

The title is a bit of a misnomer as it really is about the establishment of an interdisciplinary research centre called the Santa Fe Institute, appropriately based in that city in New Mexico. The author combines fascinating stories of how the people came together to create such a unique body each being motivated by ideas, not necessarily recognized as aspects on complexity as such, which did not fit the mould that they were trying to be forced into.

The book is a toure de force on how these individuals pursued their ideas, thinking the unthinkable, talking to others who were like minded, being able to get in touch with specialists in disciplines who recognized that these people would perhaps be the ones to break the mould.

The stories of enthusiasm, determination, persistence of the individuals and finding the ability to speak across the divide of disciplines and recognize that their subject areas could be examined using methodologies which were similar and which undermined a lot of traditional ways of thinking about problems, are highly infectious. Almost an intellectual equivalent of bodice-rippers in romance novels. Similarly the book is fast paced in demonstrating how these avenues of study have opened up a veritable panorama of research programmes which are leading to fruitful outcomes.

I have been unhappy for years with the whole notion of economic forecasts and financial analysts forecasts, which when wrong (often) do not lead to unemployment. Similarly, I question the notion of rational human beings, meaning men, when consumers are women by a significant margin who use different criteria in any marketplace. The failure of prediction over the centuries has caused a lot of human misery and will probably cause more. I must concur with one notion in this book that economics should be more of a discipline seeking understanding of real economies.

Complexity shows how things change, how they evolve by what economic professionals call exogenous shocks which cannot be predicted by their modeling. Humans are affected by feelings, the weather and a host of other things which cannot be modeled or quantifies. This introduction to fascinating new ways in which to view the world has a lot of explanatory power in so many areas. It really is an outstanding work which I am going to reread almost immediately.

It is a long time since reading one book has generated so much enthusiasm for further study and rereading older works through new lenses. My only regret is that I never found it earlier.

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.

William Blake.

a book about the mathematicians that developed complexity theory. My statement is more a warning than a complaint. Setting their results in a human and cultural context - as Waldrop does - makes an interesting read and a useful introduction to the field. And the field is promising; it looks at mathematical systems from the inside out, rather than the traditional outside in. Just don't buy the book expecting a guide to recreating even the simplest of systems mentioned.

Those who want to play with the mathematics itself will find other books more helpful. See, for example, Flake's book, "The Computational Beauty of Nature", which contains a description of Waldrop's frequently mentioned "boids" in enough detail that a reader can create similar systems. Flake also describes the details of many of the other systems alluded to in Waldrop's book, mercifully at the "how to do it"level, rather than the rigorous "theorem and proof" level. The two books fit well together.

Waldrop's writing style is clean, clear, literate, and unobtrusive. Read the book for what he says, rather than for how he says it. If you enjoy reading a technical book both for the what the author says - and for how he says it - try almost anything by John McPhee, particularly his loose series on the geology of North America.

This is a brilliant and riveting account of the birth of the science of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute told in the form of detailed and human biographical profiles of some the leading scientific voices in the movement. Some reviewers here have complained that this isn't a book of science, per se, but more of history. While you will not find the math, code, detailed analysis of various models, or even illustrations of some of the compelling graphics; you will find well wrought descriptions of the basic theories and the evolution of thinking that delivered them. Getting the social and broader scientific context for the founders is a great introduction. Then you can read their books to get the nitty gritty, and you'll appreciate it better for having gained the long range perspective from Waldrop.

Complexity and emergence are some of the most compelling ideas to come out of the science of chaos - and are real paradigm changing ideas that promise to transform science in the 21st century and beyond. Complexity is the study of how agglomerations of agents behaving individually come to manifest dramatically complex group behaviors (called "emergent phenomena") with a richness you could never derive from the study of the simple components. Commonly studied emergent behaviors include the stock market, economies, flocks of birds and fish, the rise of life from pre-biotic molecular soup, the properties of complex molecules compared to the properties of their component atoms, etc... Methods of study are frequently computer simulations that model emergent complexity using simple rules in a recursive way reminiscent of chaos theory research. Indeed, Langton shows that emergent complexity is along the same continuum as chaos, but pitched at the edge between chaos and static order - literally the "edge of chaos". Some of the same scientists feature in both theories too - particularly Doyne Farmer of UCAL Santa Cruz.

The fact that informational order appears spontaneously seems to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics - but does not because only information is being created, not energy. Kauffman calls it "order for free". This emergent order is deeply significant in a number of ways. First of all it provides a way of studying the structures of reality that are too messy and dynamic to fit classical reductionist science. But, more importantly, the reality of emergent complexity says something deeper about a creative generative force in the universe which resonates deeply with human spiritual feelings. Seeing order emerge spontaneously feels like witnessing "creation". In the latter chapters we see that evolution moves complex systems closer towards the edge of chaos (lambda around 1/4). Not only does this give a mathematical model for "evolutionary fitness" (which previously had been only definable as a tautology: evolutionary fitness = higher rates of survival (i.e. fitness)) but this also suggests a deeper concordance between a particular degree of chaos and some powerful natural property of phase transition that somehow engenders all the amazing dynamical systems we marvel at - particularly life itself on all its levels, from the swirling metabolic action of cells to the cellular group behavior of complex organisms such as ourselves, and our higher level social behavior. It's not an accident of evolution - it's an important, universal and inevitable law of nature, like gravity or electromagnetism.

Waldrop gets this and he takes you into Langton's computer lab the night he has his epiphany while playing the game of "Life" and other critical moments of inspiration. While this book doesn't spur you to take out your calculator and do the math like Gleik's "Chaos" it makes you feel the magic and gives you a heck of reading list to pursue further.

I read this book cover to cover and I loved it!

At times it becomes hard to keep track of all scientists but those moments are very few.

To the complain of some other reviewers that the book is about Santa Fe institute and not about complexity…

I found more than enough good information about complexity so that did not bother me at all.

Just one negative thing: I wish I knew there was a more recent edition!!! 🙈

I'm really interested in the science of Complex Adaptive Systems and was excited about this book. Which i found very interesting, but a little off the mark for what i wanted.

To put it most simply: it is more about the Emergence of the Science - than the Science of Emergence.

If you're interested in history and the people who build this science - or at least the Santa Fe institute - then you'll enjoy this.

A history of the science is a good place to start if you are interested in the science of complex systems. An unexpected, enjoyable read for the depth and breath of the subjects' reach.

In many ways this is a history book. It gives biographies and traces the thoughts of a number of very good thinkers. Along the way it shows how isolated ideas from a great number of people blend together to generalize each other, leading to some amazing ideas.

This is not a technical book. This book is about breadth without much depth. There are few if any formulae in the text. There are only ideas building upon other ideas. Look at it as a broad synthsis without rigor.

To be honest the first several chapters were difficult to read. This part was mainly biographical in nature and there were not enough ideas introduced to catch my interest. After reading more and more, it became very easy to link the ideas into a more interesting cohesiveness. In effect the book follows the traditions of evolving systems by combining what seem to be random bits and pieces to grow into something much more complex and useful. it grows on you.

This is the story of the creation of the Santa Fe Institute and the personalities and thinking of the scientists who came together to explore disciplines that just might relate to their own. So we have mathematicians, physicists, biologists, computer programmers and analysts, chemists, astronomers, and many more giving workshops and lectures to one another to explore what lies between order and chaos. (A car key is simple. A car is complicated. A car in traffic is complex.) This book is about complexity.

Author Waldrop tells stories and explores the personalities of the men and women who made the Santa Fe Institute happen, thereby creating a tale that enlightens the reader on many intellectual levels. This book was written in 1992, but it is timeless.

Not just the history of Santa Fe Institute. This book is much more.

While it is truly the story of how Santa Fe came into being, it is also about WHY it was instituted. This book is mostly for common people (not for scientists or experts) to read about what the benefits and limitations of some scientific fields are and why it was required to bring them all together on a common pedestal and combine the knowledge of multiple fields.

A good book. Though I wish, it was a bit more coherent in its story telling.

Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop, Simon and Schuster, USA, 1992; Penguin, UK, 1994, 384 ff.

The way the world works

By Howard A. Jones

Mitchell Waldrop qualified initially with a PhD in particle physics but since then has pursued a career in science journalism. This book is essentially anecdotal and biographical. It described the formation in 1984 and history over the following decade of the Santa Fe Institute, an organization devoted to a study of complex systems in whatever field they may occur. Many of its principals, whose biographies are briefly described here in the context of the Institute, worked previously at the nuclear facility of Los Alamos.

The author makes it clear in the opening chapter that "complexity" is a subject that is relevant to most aspects of life, from economics to ecology, and from politics to particle physics. It's about `the incessant urge of complex systems to organize themselves into patterns'. Biologists have turned to the spontaneous emergence of complexity as their way of countering scientifically the arguments of creationism and "intelligent design" in the natural world. The innate quest for complexity that is built into atoms and molecules is used to explain the emergence of polymers like proteins and nucleic acids from the simple building blocks of amino acids, bases and sugars which, in turn, arise from even simpler molecules and their constituent atoms, obviating the need for divine intervention.

Complexity theory explains how chaotic systems often reach a "tipping point" such that a further small change in the system can produce huge consequences. The well-known `butterfly effect' - the metaphor of a butterfly flapping its wings in southern England producing a snowstorm in the Andes - is an example of these globally interactive but chaotic complex systems. We are continually being told that the global warming of our planet may be another such example and that a few more parts per million of CO2 or a couple of degrees rise in temperature will produce catastrophic climate change.

Economics is one subject that recurs frequently in this book. The author actually begins in Chapter 1 with the tale of Brian Arthur whose economic theory of increasing returns first met with great resistance from conventional economists wedded to the idea of diminishing returns. The idea of increasing returns quickly leads to a proliferation of pathways that requires complex network theory to model it. Much of Chapter 3 is devoted to the contributions of biologist Stuart Kauffman to how the order within living systems is a consequence of self-organization of their constituents. Chapter 5 focuses on John Holland and his complex adaptive systems and how they can be modelled by computer programs. Chapter 6 is about Chris Langton's struggle to construct computer programs to model what he called `artificial life'. In all complexity studies, computer modelling is the one necessarily constant factor, whatever field it is to be applied to. Chapter 9, the final chapter, is an overview of challenges waiting to be met by the Institute in the 1990s. For a highly readable introduction to the study of complex systems with the minimum of technical jargon I know of no book better than this one.

Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.

How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity (Princeton Science Library)

I really enjoyed this book. Though I was familiar with some concepts, this book provided excellent outline and history of this field.

My book came on time. It is in good condition.

思って居たより分厚い内容の本だったが読み応えが在ってとても良かった。