Complexity : a guided tour /

Complexity : a guided tour /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Mitchell, Melanie (Computer scientist)
Imprint:Oxford [England] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.
Description:1 online resource (xvi, 349 pages) : illustrations, map
Language:English
Subject:
Complexity (Philosophy)
Complexity (Philosophy)
Electronic books.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11280734
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780199724574
0199724571
9780195124415
0195124413
1282328239
9781282328235
9786612328237
6612328231
Digital file characteristics:data file
Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 326-336) and index.
English.
Print version record.
Summary:"What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer. In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields"--Provided by publisher.
Other form:Print version: Mitchell, Melanie. Complexity. Oxford [England] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009 9780195124415 0195124413
Table of Contents:
  • Background and history. What is complexity? ; dynamics, chaos, and prediction ; Information ; Computation ; Evolution ; Genetics, simplified ; Defining and measuring complexity
  • Life and evolution in computers. Self-reproducing computer programs ; Genetic algorithms
  • Computation writ large. Cellular automata, life, and the universe ; Computing with particles ; Information processing in living systems ; How to make analogies (if you are a computer) ; Prospects of computer modeling
  • Network thinking. The science of networks ; Applying network science to real-world networks ; The mystery of scaling ; Evolution, complexified
  • Conclusion. The past and future of the sciences of complexity.

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