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Mitchell M. Waldrop

田中 三彦

遠山 峻征

A look at the rebellious thinkers who are challenging old ideas with their insights into the ways countless elements of complex systems interact to produce spontaneous order out of confusion

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In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell - and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. This book is their story - the story of how they have tried to forge what they like to call the science of the 21st century.

How has the universe created such complex structures as galaxies, planets, plants, animals and brains? Why does the economy work in unpredictable ways which cannot even be explained by economists? How can we account for such intricate structures as the eye and kidney? This important and highly readable book shows how in all of these examples complex mechanisms are at work, in which numerous independent agents interact with each other creating spontaneous self-org. within the system, a special dynamism emerging at the edge of chaos. Researchers in this new field are moving away from the linear, reductionist thinking that has dominated science since Newton's time. This book offers a lively and compelling picture of the work in progress.

物事は全て秩序から混沌へと進み、やがて宇宙は終局する―。この常識を覆したのが「複雑系」だ。そしてこの発見は、物理学、化学、経済学、情報学...すべての学問体系を揺るがせるに至った。新しいサイエンスのキーワード「複雑系」をあらゆる角度から分析しつつ、創造神に一歩近づいたサンタフェ研究所の俊英たちのドラマを証言で綴る、新世紀サイエンス・ドキュメンタリー。

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複雑系―科学革命の震源地・サンタフェ研究所の天才たち (新潮文庫)