The Complex World

The Complex World, originally published in Volume 1 of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science, presents an entirely new framing of nature, of the human role in the natural and technological worlds, and what it means to prosper on a living planet. We live in a complex world-meaning one that is increasingly connected, evolving, technological, volatile, and potentially poised for catastrophe. And yet we continue to treat the world as if it were simple: linear, unchanging, disconnected, and infinitely exploitable. Complexity science is an approach to understanding and surviving in a complex world. In this concise and comprehensive introduction, Santa Fe Institute President David C. Krakauer traces the roots of complexity science back to the nineteenth-century science of machines-evolved and engineered-into the twentieth-century science of emergent systems. By combining insights from evolution, computation, nonlinear dynamics, and statistical physics, complexity science provides the first scientific framework for understanding the purposeful universe.

The Complex World , originally published in Volume 1 of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science , presents an entirely new framing of nature, of the human role in the natural and technological worlds, and what it means to prosper on a living planet. We live in a complex world-meaning one that is increasingly connected, evolving, technological, volatile, and potentially poised for catastrophe. And yet we continue to treat the world as if it were simple: linear, unchanging, disconnected, and infinitely exploitable. Complexity science is an approach to understanding and surviving in a complex world. In this concise and comprehensive introduction, Santa Fe Institute President David C. Krakauer traces the roots of complexity science back to the nineteenth-century science of machines-evolved and engineered-into the twentieth-century science of emergent systems. By combining insights from evolution, computation, nonlinear dynamics, and statistical physics, complexity science provides the first scientific framework for understanding the purposeful universe.