Download or read book The Significance of Complexity written by Kees van Kooten Niekerk and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-01-06 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2004. Thanks to computer simulations science is beginning to understand complex natural processes such as the weather, earthquakes and the evolution of life. The Significance of Complexity deals with the importance of the sciences of complexity - for the humanities and theology. First, three scientists explain the science of complexity and illustrate it with concrete examples. Second, two scholars consider the concept of complexity and possible applications of complexity theory within the humanities, e.g. as a tool to understand the interplay between the artist, the work of art and the user in interactive art. Finally, three theologians ask what can be learned from the science of complexity for a religious understanding of humankind and the world. The Significance of Complexity is a pioneering work exploring the import of a fascinating new branch of science for human self-understanding. It caters for all those who are interested in relating science to the quest for the meaning of life.
Download or read book Complexity Science and World Affairs written by Walter C. Clemens Jr. and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2013-11-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did some countries transition peacefully from communist rule to political freedom and market economies, while others did not? Why did the United States enjoy a brief moment as the sole remaining superpower, and then lose power and influence across the board? What are the prospects for China, the main challenger to American hegemony? In Complexity Science and World Affairs, Walter C. Clemens Jr. demonstrates how the basic concepts of complexity science can broaden and deepen the insights gained by other approaches to the study of world affairs. He argues that societal fitness—the ability of a social system to cope with complex challenges and opportunities—hinges heavily on the values and way of life of each society, and serves to explain why some societies gain and others lose. Applying theory to several rich case studies, including political developments across post–Soviet Eurasia and the United States, Clemens shows that complexity science offers a powerful set of tools for advancing the study of international relations, comparative government, and, more broadly, the social sciences.
Download or read book Making Things Work written by Yaneer Bar-Yam and published by Knowledge Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The science of complexity has revolutionized our understanding of everything from the brain to the economy to the weather. This book shows how it can change the way we approach our most persistent social problems. It introduces key concepts like emergence, self-organization and networks, and uses them to propose novel solutions to problems that affect us all. Suitable for anyone struggling to cope with complex challenges. Written by Yaneer Bar-Yam the leading expert in the use of complexity science in solving real world problems in healthcare, education, military, engineering, ethnic violence and terrorism.
Download or read book Complex Science for a Complex World written by Pascal Perez and published by ANU E Press. This book was released on 2006-08-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is well known that human activities are endangering the stability and sustainability of many fragile ecosystems. This title looks at the science that addresses the frontiers of interactions between human behavior and environmental responses.
Download or read book Simple Rules written by Donald Sull and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlines an approach to high-performance problem-solving and decision-making that draws on insights from survival guides, pop culture and other sources. Co-written by the award-winning author of The Upside of Turbulence. 75,000 first printing.
Download or read book Images of a Complex World written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Science Matters written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Learning Causality in a Complex World written by Tina Grotzer and published by R & L Education. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do children's interactions on the playground have to do with foreign policy? How does science understanding in middle school relate to environmental disasters in third world countries? The causal patterns that we detect and how we act upon them pervade every aspect of our lives. These skills will only become more important in the future as our world becomes more global and more interconnected. Yet we aren't very skilled at thinking about causality. Research shows that instead we rely on limiting default assumptions that can lead to poor choices in a complex world. What can we do about it? This book offers ways to become aware of these patterns and to reframe our thinking to become more effective learners and citizens of the world. Through examples and accessible explanations, it offers a causal curriculum to enable more effective learning so that we can put the power of better causal understanding to work for ourselves and the next generation-- for today and tomorrow.
Download or read book Simple Rules for a Complex World written by Richard Allen EPSTEIN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too many laws, too many lawyers--that's the necessary consequence of a complex society, or so conventional wisdom has it. Countless pundits insist that any call for legal simplification smacks of nostalgia, sentimentality, or naivete. But the conventional view, the noted legal scholar Richard Epstein tells us, has it exactly backward. The richer texture of modern society allows for more individual freedom and choice. And it allows us to organize a comprehensive legal order capable of meeting the technological and social challenges of today on the basis of just six core principles. In this book, Epstein demonstrates how. The first four rules, which regulate human interactions in ordinary social life, concern the autonomy of the individual, property, contract, and tort. Taken together these rules establish and protect consistent entitlements over all resources, both human and natural. These rules are backstopped by two more rules that permit forced exchanges on payment of just compensation when private or public necessity so dictates. Epstein then uses these six building blocks to clarify many intractable problems in the modern legal landscape. His discussion of employment contracts explains the hidden virtues of contracts at will and exposes the crippling weaknesses of laws regarding collective bargaining, unjust dismissal, employer discrimination, and comparable worth. And his analysis shows how laws governing liability for products and professional services, corporate transactions, and environmental protection have generated unnecessary social strife and economic dislocation by violating these basic principles. Simple Rules for a Complex World offers a sophisticated agenda for comprehensive social reform that undoes much of the mischief of the modern regulatory state. At a time when most Americans have come to distrust and fear government at all levels, Epstein shows how a consistent application of economic and political theory allows us to steer a middle path between too much and too little.
Download or read book Aspects of Complexity written by Terry Cooke-Davies and published by Project Management Institute. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complexity in projects may be one of those things that are difficult to define, but easy to recognize when encountered. Or maybe not so easy. This collection of analyses deals with complexity in a way that will appeal to both academics and practitioners. It arises from a series of four academic-business roundtables sponsored by the Project Management Institute in the U.S., Australia, Malta, and Brazil. Researchers will appreciate the academic rigor of the content and practitioners will appreciate the generally reader-friendly style and tone. The opening chapter offers that elusive definition and provides the foundation for common understanding. The next four chapters compose the theoretical portion of the book, establishing the underpinning concepts related to systems thinking, systems engineering, chaos or complexity theory, and behavioral and cognitive aspects. The remainder of the book is more practice-oriented. It is a serious attempt to pull together what is currently known and understood about the topic, to help practitioners and their managers improve future practice, and to guide research into answering those questions that will best help to improve understanding of the topic.
Download or read book The Complex Alternative written by David C. Krakauer and published by . This book was released on 2021-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Simplexity written by Alain Berthoz and published by Odile Jacob. This book was released on 2018-12-20 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Simplexity, as I understand it, is the range of solutions living organisms have found, despite the complexity of natural processes, to enable the brain to prepare an action and plan for the consequences of it. These solutions are simplifying principles that enable the processing of information or situations, by taking into account past experience and anticipating the future. They are neither caricatures, shortcuts, or summaries. They are new ways of asking questions, sometimes at the cost of occasional detours, in order to achieve faster, more elegant, more effective actions.” A. B. As Alain Berthoz demonstrates in this profoundly original book, simplicity is never easy; it requires suppressing, selecting, connecting, thinking, in order to then act in the best way possible. And what if we, in turn, are inspired by the living world to process the complexity that surrounds us? Alain Berthoz is professor at the Collège de France where he is co-director of the Laboratoire de physiologie de la perception et de l’action. [Laboratory for the physiology of perception and action]. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and is the author of Le Sens du mouvement [The Brain's Sense of Movement] and La Décision [Emotion and Reason].
Download or read book In the Bubble written by John Thackara and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to design a world in which we rely less on stuff, and more on people. We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now—not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology—ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles—above all, lightness—inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.
Download or read book Observation and Ecology written by Rafe Sagarin and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The need to understand and address large-scale environmental problems that are difficult to study in controlled environments—issues ranging from climate change to overfishing to invasive species—is driving the field of ecology in new and important directions. Observation and Ecology documents that transformation, exploring how scientists and researchers are expanding their methodological toolbox to incorporate an array of new and reexamined observational approaches—from traditional ecological knowledge to animal-borne sensors to genomic and remote-sensing technologies—to track, study, and understand current environmental problems and their implications. The authors paint a clear picture of what observational approaches to ecology are and where they fit in the context of ecological science. They consider the full range of observational abilities we have available to us and explore the challenges and practical difficulties of using a primarily observational approach to achieve scientific understanding. They also show how observations can be a bridge from ecological science to education, environmental policy, and resource management. Observations in ecology can play a key role in understanding our changing planet and the consequences of human activities on ecological processes. This book will serve as an important resource for future scientists and conservation leaders who are seeking a more holistic and applicable approach to ecological science.
Download or read book What Is a Complex System written by James Ladyman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-05 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear, concise introduction to the quickly growing field of complexity science that explains its conceptual and mathematical foundations What is a complex system? Although "complexity science" is used to understand phenomena as diverse as the behavior of honeybees, the economic markets, the human brain, and the climate, there is no agreement about its foundations. In this introduction for students, academics, and general readers, philosopher of science James Ladyman and physicist Karoline Wiesner develop an account of complexity that brings the different concepts and mathematical measures applied to complex systems into a single framework. They introduce the different features of complex systems, discuss different conceptions of complexity, and develop their own account. They explain why complexity science is so important in today's world.
Download or read book Diversity and Complexity written by Scott E. Page and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to the role of diversity in complex adaptive systems. A complex system--such as an economy or a tropical ecosystem--consists of interacting adaptive entities that produce dynamic patterns and structures. Diversity plays a different role in a complex system than it does in an equilibrium system, where it often merely produces variation around the mean for performance measures. In complex adaptive systems, diversity makes fundamental contributions to system performance. Scott Page gives a concise primer on how diversity happens, how it is maintained, and how it affects complex systems. He explains how diversity underpins system level robustness, allowing for multiple responses to external shocks and internal adaptations; how it provides the seeds for large events by creating outliers that fuel tipping points; and how it drives novelty and innovation. Page looks at the different kinds of diversity--variations within and across types, and distinct community compositions and interaction structures--and covers the evolution of diversity within complex systems and the factors that determine the amount of maintained diversity within a system. Provides a concise and accessible introduction Shows how diversity underpins robustness and fuels tipping points Covers all types of diversity The essential primer on diversity in complex adaptive systems
Download or read book Hypernetworks in the Science of Complex Systems written by Jeffrey Johnson and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern world is complex beyond human understanding and control. The science of complex systems aims to find new ways of thinking about the many interconnected networks of interaction that defy traditional approaches. Thus far, research into networks has largely been restricted to pairwise relationships represented by links between two nodes. This volume marks a major extension of networks to multidimensional hypernetworks for modeling multi-element relationships, such as companies making up the stock market, the neighborhoods forming a city, people making up committees, divisions making up companies, computers making up the internet, men and machines making up armies, or robots working as teams. This volume makes an important contribution to the science of complex systems by: (i) extending network theory to include dynamic relationships between many elements; (ii) providing a mathematical theory able to integrate multilevel dynamics in a coherent way; (iii) providing a new methodological approach to analyze complex systems; and (iv) illustrating the theory with practical examples in the design, management and control of complex systems taken from many areas of application. Contents:IntroductionSets and RelationsHypergraphs and the Galois LatticeSimplicial Complexes and Q-AnalysisBackcloth and Traffic: Dynamics Constrained by TopologyHypernetworksMultilevel SystemsTime, Events, Prediction and ForecastingHypernetworks and DesignPolicy, Design, Planning and ScienceNotes and Reflections Readership: Academics: researchers, scientists, social scientists, complex systems scientists, economists, biologists; Industry: managers, planners, consultants, knowledge professionals, systems engineers, automation specialists, supply chain managers; Public services: Council Officers, city planners, transport planners, health professionals, welfare professionals. Key Features:A first book of its kind on 'hypernetworks', a term the author has coined to describe the mathematical structures he has worked on over the last 30 yearsIntroduces hypernetworks in the context of examples drawn from a wide range of fields, including design, planning, management, art, neural network, machine vision, robotics, traffic, road accidents, amongst othersThe emphasis of this volume is on useful and added-value applications. It will develop the necessary mathematics and assuming no pre-requisitesContains a myriad of illustrations to further understand the topics discussedReviews: “The mathematics is explicitly explained and no difficult theorems are included in this book in order to enable scientists, designers and policy makers to work together.” Zentralblatt MATH
