Complexity: A Guided Tour
Melanie Mitchell | 2009-01-01 00:00:00 | Oxford University Press | 368 | Popular
This book really lives up to its title, "Complexity: A Guided Tour." Dr. Mitchell has turned her Santa Fe Institute lectures on the foundations of Complexity into a very interesting, readable book suitable for academics, professionals, students, and interested laypeople. She explains how complexity fits into the history of scientific knowledge. She relates it to the rapidly expanding field of information science, as influenced by biological rather than mechanical models. She even explains how computer models relate to living systems as information processors.
Having read many scholarly papers on these topics, I can vouch for the clarity and accuracy of her work. She certainly doesn't need any endorsement, though; as a successful doctoral student under the renowned Doug Hofstadter and now a professor at Santa Fe, she is in the inner circle of complexity scientists today. If only her book had come out a year or two ago! It puts in one place many ideas we used to have to search out and integrate on our own!
One note: the mathematics of complexity science can be daunting. Dr. Mitchell has done a terrific job expressing & explaining those concepts. Unlike many of the complexity books in print, hers is both intelligent and accessible. Highly recommend it!
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