What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? In this remarkably clear and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. Richly illustrated, Complexity: A Guided Tour - winner of the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science - offers a wide-ranging overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for its contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: Background and History

CHAPTER ONE: What Is Complexity?

CHAPTER TWO: Dynamics, Chaos, and Prediction

CHAPTER THREE: Information

CHAPTER FOUR: Computation

CHAPTER FIVE: Evolution

CHAPTER SIX: Genetics, Simplified

CHAPTER SEVEN: Defining and Measuring Complexity

PART TWO: Life and Evolution in Computers

CHAPTER EIGHT: Self-Reproducing Computer Programs

CHAPTER NINE: Genetic Algorithms

PART THREE: Computation Writ Large

CHAPTER TEN: Cellular Automata, Life, and the Universe

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Computing with Particles

CHAPTER TWELEVE: Information Processing in Living Systems

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: How to Make Analogies (if You Are a Computer)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Prospects of Computer Modeling

PART FOUR: Network Thinking

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Science of Networks

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Applying Network Science to Real-World Networks

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Mystery of Scaling

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Evolution, Complexified

PART FIVE: Conclusion

I CHAPTER NINTEEN: The Past and Future of the Sciences of Complexity

About the Author

Melanie Mitchell is Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.