Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality (Paperback)

~ George A. Cowan (Author), David Pines (Author), David Meltzer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A classic overview of the science of complexity from the prestigious Santa Fe Institute.

There has been a remarkable growth in collaborative academic research focused on complexity in recent years. One of the greatest challenges is to discover which features are essential and which shared by all the seemingly disparate systems that are described as complex. This book describes current views on this subject held by various eminent scholars associated with the Santa Fe Institute, including Murray Gell-Mann, Brian Arthur, Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, and Kenneth Arrow.

About the Author

George A. Cowan is Founding President Emeritus of the Santa Fe Institute. David Pines is Research Professor in the department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is also a co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute. David Meltzer is a visiting assistant professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.

Product Details

• Paperback: 731 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; 1st edition (November 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738202320
• ISBN-13: 978-0738202327
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,602,529 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well...SOMEONE didn't get invited to an SFI conference..., February 12, 2006

By	Quality Book Reviews (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This is groundbreaking (and clearly very controversial) work. Read the review below: this stuff gets a rise out of people. Anyone wanting to become familiar with original, seminal studies from the complexity science movement will want this book.

15 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I laughed, I cried..., April 6, 2002

By	Yuri Kuzyk "zentao" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

Well...where to begin without going further back?

This book is a compendium of papers, most from members of the Sante Fe institute. That is, the papers are by the self-proclaimed "experts" in the field of complex adaptive systems (complexity as it is termed by some). Although published in 1999 it is mostly out of date as a reference but it stands as testament to something I think is more interesting than pure science.

What we have here is a prime example of how dogma (religion) begins and sadly, impedes any chance for progress. At this point, perhaps I should suggest that anyone reading this who hasn't heard of Kuhn, Wittgenstein and Prigogine to go and read a bit. And then you need to understand that we have completed the whole genome-mapping fiasco and "discovered" something that goes against what the high gods of complexity, genetics and evolution have been preaching: we don't have more than 100,000 genomes we have 30,000.

Ok, now back to the book. The papers, as I stated, are out of date. All interesting results here are tied back to the "magic" number of 100,000 genomes. That is simply due to the fact that according to the diverstity of cells and specific proteins in our bodies combined with present theories we need that many. So one would think, right away, that any new theory that is "more correct" than the old ones would quickly point out this large discrepancy.

Well, no one did find this. Instead they just muddle around withsome nifty math and even more exciting computer simulations and then settle back to make pronouncements. And what bombastic statements the high priests of complexity pronounced! The best part of this book are the transcripts of discussions about the papers from the big names, notably Gell-Mann, Anderson and Kauffman.

One would think that a bit of reading in philosophy would really have helped this lot to see beyond their noses. That is, how can there be a "true science" (uttered by one during a discussion) when science is simply a compression of knowledge and the whole idea of "truth" implies more compression? This is laughable when your own theory says that you can never tell if something is optimally compressed (just read Chaitin and Kolmogorov); I ask again, how do you know you have a "true science"?

Yes, egos are rampant here and it is enough to make you alternately laugh and then cry now that we see how far off the mark the "science" is. There are slights on Freeman but really, Freeman has more "science" ("theory that matches observation" to quote Gell-Mann) than anyone in this collection. In fact, Anna Wise has more science in her books about brainwaves than this group.

Disappointed? You bet. I fail to see how winners of Nobel prizes and "Genius" awards could end up being so far off the mark. So in the end, I can only rate the intended content (science) as "2 stars" but the high comedy and drama make the historical content worth 5 out of 5. Enjoy it for that only!