Hi Owen, if I may recommend a book:
Complexity: Hierarchical Structures and Scaling in Physics (Cambridge Nonlinear Science Series) by Remo Badii, Antonio Politi Here the amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/eb78d Site of the author: http://www.geocities.com/badii_remo/ Despite the title, the book does not only draw examples from physics, but also from other domains, like biology. I became aware of the book after my extended rummagings through Cosma Shalizi's site (especially his reviews, notebooks, papers,... all very interesting :-) Here's Cosma's review of the book: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/badii-and-politi/ And if I may quote the last sentence of the review: "I wouldn't want to teach such a course to those who hadn't previously been exposed to nonlinear dynamics, or who were unfamiliar with statistical mechanics at the level of Part I of Landau and Lifshitz, say second year graduate students in physics and applied math; but it is, hands down, the best book currently available to teach such critters about complexity, and even more seasoned, not to say jaded, researchers will find it useful as a reference." Hope this helps, Günther Owen Densmore wrote: > Frankly, I'm disappointed. > > The FRIAM list has been through several very philosophical > conversations over 3-4 weeks, all purporting to be "complex". Yet > when I ask for a formal treatment, I get no answer. > > Does this mean, for complexity, there's no There There? > > Surely there is some interesting formalism we can use for > complexity. Robert Holmes suggested a great book to us a while back > which I had forgotten in my initial email: > David MacKay: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms > http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/ > > Do we all talk about complexity yet have no basis for it? > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore > http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org > > > On Jul 19, 2006, at 1:01 PM, Owen Densmore wrote: > >> I've been looking at/for complexity books that are textbooks or >> similarly technical/mathematical. The recent Newman, Barabasi & >> Watts collection The Structure and Dynamics of Networks is pretty >> good but I would like something broader, covering the "Complex >> Systems" world. >> >> Bar Yam's original book: >> http://tinyurl.com/mmxwp >> or >> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813341213/sr=1-1/qid=1153334623/ >> ref=sr_1_1/104-7070581-5619133?ie=UTF8 >> is the best I know of. Anyone know of another? >> >> -- Owen >> >> Owen Densmore >> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
