Mitchell, M. Complexity - A Guided Tour (2009)

Oxford University Press

This book has five parts. In part I I give some background on the history and content of four subject areas that are fundamental to the study of complex systems: information, computation, dynamics and chaos, and evolution. In parts II–IV I describe how these four areas are being woven together in the science of complexity. I describe how life and evolution can be mimicked in computers, and conversely how the notion of computation itself is being imported to explain the behavior of natural systems. I explore the new science of networks and how it is discovering deep commonalities among systems as disparate as social communities, the Internet, epidemics, and metabolic systems in organisms. I describe several examples of how complexity can be measured in nature, how it is changing our view of living systems, and how this new view might inform the design of intelligent machines. I look at prospects of computer modeling of complex systems, as well as the perils of such models. Finally, in the last part I take on the larger question of the search for general principles in the sciences of complexity.

part one Background and History

chapter one What Is Complexity? 3
chapter two Dynamics, Chaos, and Prediction 15
chapter three Information 40
chapter four Computation 56
chapter five Evolution 71
chapter six Genetics, Simplified 88
chapter seven Defining and Measuring Complexity 94

part two Life and Evolution in Computers

chapter eight Self-Reproducing Computer Programs 115
chapter nine Genetic Algorithms 127

part three Computation Writ Large

chapter ten Cellular Automata, Life, and the Universe 145
chapter eleven Computing with Particles 160
chapter twelve Information Processing in Living Systems 169
chapter thirteen How to Make Analogies (if You Are a Computer) 186
chapter fourteen Prospects of Computer Modeling 209

part four Network Thinking

chapter fifteen The Science of Networks 227
chapter sixteen Applying Network Science to Real-World Networks 247
chapter seventeen The Mystery of Scaling 258
chapter eighteen Evolution, Complexified 273

part five Conclusion

chapter nineteen The Past and Future of the Sciences of Complexity 291