Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

by M . Mitchell Waldrop (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $4.24

  In a rented convent in Santa Fe, a revolution has been brewing. The activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics such as Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians and computer scientists from Los Alamos. They share a deep impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since the time of Newton. Instead they are gathering novel ideas about interconnectedness, co-evolution, chaos, structure and order - and forging them into an entirely new, unified way of thinking about nature, human social behaviour, life, and the universe itself. Their iconoclastic think tank, the Santa Fe Institute, is creating a new science called complexity . They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell, and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. They want to know why ancient ecosystems often remained stable for millions of years, only to vanish in a geological instant, and what these might have to do with the sudden collapse of Soviet communism. Above all, they want to know how the universe manages to produce complex structures like galaxies, stars, planets, bacteria, plants, animals and brains. There are common threads in all these queries, and the Santa Fe scientists seek to understand them.

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $4.19

  In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell - and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. This book is their story - the story of how they have tried to forge what they like to call the science of the 21st century .