Review by Choice Review
This volume is an engaging and lucid introduction to complex systems: things that have many component parts operating according to simple rules, have no central control, and yet as a whole exhibit adaptive, coordinated behavior or emergent properties. Mitchell (computer science, Portland State) provides examples of such systems ranging from ant colonies to the brain to the World Wide Web. A list of the areas of research covered illustrates the author's range of interests: information processing, computation with finite state machines, chaos, genetic (artificially selected) algorithms, cellular automata, networks, and computer modeling. Mitchell is able to succinctly describe core ideas and discoveries in each of these areas, and briefly introduce some of the key figures who have made major contributions. What emerges is not only an understanding of important results in each of these specialized areas, but some sense of how they combine to analyze complex systems--though not yet--as the author responsibly and accurately points out, a science of complexity. Though the book is aptly described as a guided tour for a general audience, it will also be useful to advanced students and researchers in adjacent areas. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. D. Bantz University of Alaska
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
All theoretical models are wrong, but some are useful. Both inevitable error and promising usefulness abound in the bold conceptual models that Mitchell surveys in exploring the nascent science of complexity. Readers will marvel at the sheer range of settings in which complex systems operate: from ant hills to the stock market, from T cells to Web searches, from disease epidemics to power outages, complexity challenges theorists' intellectual adroitness. With refreshing clarity, Mitchell invites nonspecialists to share in these researchers' adventures in recognizing and measuring complexity and then predicting its cascading effects. Concepts central to thermodynamics, information theory, and computer programming all come into focus in this foray into the recesses of complexity. Still, the analysis illuminates more than explanatory frameworks (such as network diagrams and genetic algorithms); piquant personalities (including Stephen Jay Gould and John von Neumann) also receive illuminating scrutiny. Though Mitchell acknowledges the doubts of skeptics, she still expresses hope that persistent complexity researchers will yet weld their disparate accomplishments into a coherent paradigm. Mind-expanding.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
