- Hardcover: 380 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Printing edition (Nov 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0671767895
- ISBN-13: 978-0671767891
- Product Dimensions: 24.4 x 16.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 563,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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First Sentence
This is a book about the science of complexity-a subject that's still so new and so wide-ranging that nobody knows quite how to define it, or even where its boundaries lie. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
This is a book about the science of complexity-a subject that's still so new and so wide-ranging that nobody knows quite how to define it, or even where its boundaries lie. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book back in 1994, when it was released as a paperback in the UK. I liked it tremendously, and although I let a dozen friends or so borrow it from me to read, I was keeping its track very meticulously in order to get it back every time. Complexity is one of those books that easily gets lost if you are not careful, you know.
In short, the book is a chronicle of at the time seemingly unrelated ideas that finally led to forming of the Santa Fe Institute in 1984, and the people who created them: the economist Brian Arthur and his lock-in theory of "increasing returns" (better known to engineers as "positive feedback"); Stuart Kaufmann and his "autocatalytic" models for evolving biological systems; John Holland and his genetic algorithms and genetic programming; Christopher Langton and his "artificial life"; Doyne Farmer with all his experience with chaos theory; and of course the "founding fathers" of the Santa Fe Institute: George Cowan, Kenneth Arrow, and two Nobel-prize winners, Murray Gell-Mann and Philip Anderson.
With a PhD in Physics, MA in Journalism and over ten years of service as a senior science writer for one of the world's most prestigious science journals - Science - M. Mitchell Waldrop seems like a role-model science writer. Complexity is his second book, being predecessed by Man Made Minds, a survey of artificial intelligence. This book, however, bears much greater resemblance in style with James Gleick's bestseller Chaos than with his own previous work.
Some "historical distance" allows us also a somewhat more critical view on the complexity theory itself. Contrary to the popular expectations of the time, complexity was since forced to follow the same path that chaos, fractals or catastrophe theory - to name a few - traveled before it, and admit that is not The Great Universal Theory of Everything. On the other hand, while the hype is gone, we have to admit that complexity - or "nonlinear science", if you want - is still very actively worked on.
So is this book for you? Yes, if you want vivid explanation of one of the most important ideas that shaped the end of the 20th century, and colorful portraits of the people behind it. If nothing else, it will wet your mouth. If Complexity will succeed in winning your interest, you may want to proceed with other popular reading on this topic - almost everyone of the people mentioned before has himself published at least one book. For learning more hard science, however, you should reach for other science monographs and papers.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Don't ask me why I picked up this book - it just happened to be in the library next to some Philosophy of Science books that I was looking at. I had no idea what complexitity theory was but after reading it I am enthralled by its appeal to shed some light on the workings of our world. If it were a tv show it would be a documentary as it is pretty much an account of the inception and development of the Santa Fe institute in the US. And it is this documentary style of writing that makes something that could be incredibly dry absolutely riviting. It is an insight into the lives and minds of those scientists, economists and computer programmers who were at the forefront of a scientific revolution in the 1970s to the early 1990s. This revolution occured exactly because a couple of like-minded and driven guys saw that academics working in completely separate fields were studying different phenonena but understanding their underlying mechanisms in the same way and using similar metaphors to explain their findings. This is one of the few times where separate disciplines were contained in the same department and therefore they had (have) a much better chance in coming up with the elusive unifying theory that overcomes the limitations of simple reductionism and yet is more stable than pure chaos - hence the sub title 'edge of chaos'.
It is one of those books that is readable yet highly enlightening and historically interesting. I just regret the fact I've now finished it...
It is one of those books that is readable yet highly enlightening and historically interesting. I just regret the fact I've now finished it...
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book in August 2002. Although edited in 1992, the book is still an excellent introduction to the subject of Complexity Theory. It takes a discoursive style, centered around the lives and thoughts of key individuals (Brian Arthur, Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, etc.) as main representatives of this relatively new "strain" of scientific and economic thought.
An interesting feat of the book is its broad inter-disciplinary approach including physics, economics, biochemistry, neurology/psychology and information sciences.
Definitely money well spent!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Is complexity anything new?
This is an historical account of the development of the so-called "science of complexity" in the USA. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Bellelli Andrea
The way the world works
Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop, Simon and Schuster, USA, 1992; Penguin, UK, 1994, 384 ff.
The way the world works
By Howard A. Read more
The way the world works
By Howard A. Read more
Published on 11 Jan 2010 by Dr. H. A. Jones
An engaging journey through the key ideas and moments
The principal tenets of complexity theory could be stated - to be trite - as follows: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Read more
Published on 29 May 2007 by David Everitt
A good easy read
A comfortable bed time reading that gentally introduces the new phase of science to you through its 'real events' stories. Read more
Published on 17 Feb 2004 by Maryam Shaeri
simply wonderful
Very anecdotal, which might put off some people, but which adds a nice personal touch to the book. It helps that Waldrop is a trained physicist - he makes sure that he explains... Read more
Published on 25 Aug 2000 by N. Afaf
How the Santa Fe Institute began
This is a history of the Santa Fe institute, covering all the leading players and concentrating not only on the theories, but also the different personalities that must have made... Read more
Published on 10 Nov 1998
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