Books

Short works

Books : reviews

Yaneer Bar-Yam.
Dynamics of Complex Systems.
Perseus Books. 1997

The study of complex systems in a unified framework has become recognized in recent years as a new scientific discipline, the ultimate in the interdisciplinary fields. Breaking down the barriers among physics, chemistry, and biology, and the so-called soft sciences of psychology, sociology, economics, and anthropology, this text explores the universal physical and mathematical principles that govern the emergence of complex systems from simple components. The book is designed for upper-undergraduate/beginning graduate level students, and covers a broad range of applications in a broad array of disciplines. A central goal of this text is to develop models and modeling techniques that are useful when applied to all complex systems. Chapters open with conceptual outlines and close with detailed questions, problems, and worked-out solutions.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, ed.
Unifying Themes in Complex Systems: proceedings of the first International Conference on Complex Systems, New Hampshire, 1997.
Perseus Books. 2000

Contents

Herbert A. Simon. Can there be a science of complex systems?. 2000
Richard C. Lewontin. Evolution. 2000
Charles Cantor. Genome complexity (session introduction: emergence). 2000
Daniel Keyser. Emergent properties and behavior of the atmosphere. 2000
Dan McShea. A Hypothesis about networks. 2000
Richard C. Strohman. Session introduction: informatics. 2000
Temple Smith. Whole genome bioinformatics. 2000
Bruce M. Boghosian. Session introduction: computational methods. 2000
Petra Ahrweiler. Theories in (inter)action: a complex dynamic system for theory evaluation in Science Studies. 2000
Olympia Lilly Bakalis. Modeling fractal patterns with Genetic Algorithm solutions to a variant of the inverse problem for Iterated Function Systems (IFS). 2000
Raffaele Calabretta, Stefano Nolfi, Domenico Parisi, Gunter P. Wagner. An Artificial life model for investigating the evolution of modularity. 2000
Bart De Boeck, Paul Scheunders, Dirk Van Dyck. From inductive inference to the fundamental equation of measurement. 2000
Michael Doebeli. Controlling chaos in systems with coupled maps with long-range interactions. 2000
Javier Dolado, Alvaro Moreno. Assessing software organizations from a complex systems perspective. 2000
Keith Donnelly. Hazards, self-organization, and risk compensation: A view of life at the edge. 2000
Udo Erdmann. Structure formation by Active Brownian particles with nonlinear friction. 2000
David A. Fell. Systems properties of metabolic networks. 2000
Christian V. Forst. Complex dynamics of molecular evolutionary processes. 2000
Stefanie Fuhrman, Xiling Wen, George S. Michaels, Roland Somogyi. Genetic network inference. 2000
M. Giampietro, K. Mayumi, G. Pastore. Socioeconomic systems as complex self-organizing adaptive holarchies: The dynamic exergy budget. 2000
M. Giampietro, K. Mayumi, G. Pastore. Socioeconomic systems as nested dissipative adaptive systems (holarchies) and the dynamic energy budget: Validation of the approach. 2000
Jeffrey A. Goldstein. Psychology and corporations: A complex systems perspective. 2000
Hyman Hartman. Symmetry breaking and the origin of life. 2000
Piet Hut, Brian C. Goodwin, Stuart A. Kauffman. Complexity and funtionality: A search for the where, the when, and the how. 2000
Donald E. Ingber. Biological design principles that guide self-organization, emergence, and hierarchical assembly: From complexity to tensegrity. 2000
Mariusz H. Jakubowski, Ken Steiglitz, Richard Squier. Information transfer between solitary waves in the saturable Schrodinger equation. 2000
Brian D. Josephson. An Integrated theory of nervous ssytem functioning embracing nativism and constructivism. 2000
David M. Keirsey. Towards the physics of "death". 2000
Francisco Louca. Ragnar Frisch at the edge of chaos. 2000
Philip Mayim. Programming complex systems. 2000
David A. Meyer. Towards the global: Complexity, topology and chaos in modelling, simulation and computation. 2000
Jason G. Mezey, Gunter P. Wagner. An Effect of scale in a non-additive genetic model. 2000
Kenneth J. Moriarty, Jonathan L. Machta, Raymond Greenlaw. Parallel compuational complexity in statistical physics. 2000
Mark E. J. Newman. Statistical methods of mass extinction. 2000
Danko Nikolic. A Dual processing theory of brain and mind: Where is the limited processing capacity coming from?. 2000
Helge Rose. Evolutionary strategies of optimization and the complexity of fitness landscapes. 2000
Kazuhiro Saitou. Conformational switching as assembly instructions in self-assembling mechanical systems. 2000
Jeffrey C. Schank, Jeff Alberts. Aggregation and the emergence of social behavior in rat pups modeled by simple rules of individual behavior. 2000
Bernhard Sendhoff, Clemens Potter, Werner von Seelen. The Role of information in simulated evolution. 2000
Richard Smith, Mark A. Bedau. Emergence of complex ecologies in ECHO. 2000
Robin Snyder. Spatial correlations in the contact process: A step toward better ecological models. 2000
Roland Somogyi. Many to one mappings as a basis for life. 2000
Didier Sornette. Generic mechanisms for hierarchies. 2000
Didier Sornette. Emergence in earthquakes. 2000
Yasuhiro Suzuki, Hiroshi Tanaka. Chemical oscillation in symbolic chemical system and its behavioral pattern. 2000
Kei Tokita, Ayumu Yasutomi. Extinction dynamics in a large ecological system with random interspecies interactions. 2000
Irina Trofimova. Functional differentiation in developmental sytems. 2000
Tsang Ing Jyh, Tsang Ing Ren. Tuning complexity on randomly occupied lattices. 2000
James G. Uber, Ali A. Minai. Socioeconomic organization on directional resource landscapes. 2000
Alexander Yu. Vlasov. "Continuous time" in Feigenbaum's model. 2000
Lipo Wang. Ordering chaos in a neural network with linear feedback. 2000
Peter Wills, Leah Henderson. Self-organisation and information-carrying capacity of collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers: Ligation systems. 2000
David H. Wolpert, WIlliam G. Macready. Self-dissimilarity: An empirically observable complexity measure. 2000
Gad Yagil. Complexity and order in chemical and biological systems. 2000

Yaneer Bar-Yam, Ali A. Minai, eds.
Unifying Themes in Complex Systems II: proceedings of the second International Conference on Complex Systems, 1998.
Perseus Books. 2004

Contents

Daniel L. Stein, Charles R. Doering, Geoffrey B. West, Cristopher Moore, Matt Wilson, H. Fred Nijhout. Pedagogical sessions. 2004
(transcript)
Jeffrey Robbins, Richard W. Wrangham. Reception session. 2004
(transcript)
Yaneer Bar-Yam, Philip W. Anderson, Stephen M. Kosslyn, Norman I. Badler, David Sloan Wilson. Emergence. 2004
(transcript)
J. Stephen Lansing, John Sterman, David Harel, Richard G. Palmer, Gerald Jay Sussman. Description and Modeling. 2004
(transcript)
David Litster, James Anderson, Mike McCloskey. Funding. 2004
(transcript)
Dean LeBaron. Complex understanding of today's global economics. 2004
(extended abstract)
William Fulkerson, Robert Axtell, Abhijit Deshmukh, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Win Farrell. Agents in action. 2004
(transcript)
Tom Petzinger, William McKlevey, Peter Senge, Laurence Prusak, Hentry Mintzberg, Ron Schultz. Complexity and management. 2004
(transcript)
Paul Halpern. Evolutionary algorithms on a self-organized dynamic lattice. 2004
J. Yasher Kresh, Igor Izrailtyan, Andrew S. Wechsler. The heart as a complex adaptive system. 2004
H. Van Dyke Parunak. The DASCh experience: how to model a supply chain. 2004
Jerzy Maselko, Michael Anderson. Some properties of multicelluar chemical systems: response to the environment and emergence. 2004
Wolfgang Banzhaf, Dirk Banscherus, Peter Dittrich. Hierarchical genetic programming using local modules. 2004
Hernan Lopez Garay, Joaquin Contreras. Dealing with complex human systems from an interpretive systemic perspective. 2004
Uri Wilensky, Kenneth Reisman. Connected science: learning biology through constructing and testing computational theories. 2004
Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson, Roger Vounckx. Diffuse rationality in complex systems. 2004
Hiroki Sayama. Spontaneous evolution of self-reproducing loops on cellular automata. 2004
Sui Huang, Donald E. Ingber. Regulation of cell cycle and gene activity patterns by cell shape: evidence for attractors in real regulatory networks and the selective mode of cellular control. 2004
Jay Bancroft. A model system and individual-based simulation for developing statistical techniques and hypotheses for population dynamics in fragmented populations. 2004
Jeffrey C. Schank. A new paradigm for evolutionary psychology: animal social systems as complex adaptive systems. 2004
Carlo C. Maley. Comparing causal factors in the diversification of species. 2004
Craig R. Zimmermann, Tadashi Fukami, James A. Drake. An experimentally-derived map of community assembly space. 2004
Kai Nagel, Richard L. Beckman, Christopher L. Barrett. TRANSIMS for transportation planning. 2004
Cirrus Shakeri, David C. Brown. Mapping multi-disciplinary design processes. 2004
Gottfried J. Mayer-Kress, Karl M. Newell, Yeou-Teh Liu. What can we learn from learning curves?. 2004
Holger Lange. Time series analysis of ecosystem variables with complexity measures. 2004
Robert Savit, Radu Manuca, Yi Li, Rick L. Riolo. The dynamics of minority competition. 2004
Dimitris Stassinopolous, Silvano P. Colombano, Jason D. Lohn, Gary L. Haith, Jeffrey Scargle, Shoudan Liang. Spatial autocatalytic dynamics: an approach to modeling prebiotic evolution. 2004
Francesco Santini, Lodovico Galleni, Paola Cerrai. Geophysiological modeling: a new approach at modeling the evolution of ecosystems. 2004
Paul W. Morris. Organizational Intelligence. 2004
Robert M. Cutler. The complex evolution of international orders and the current international transition. 2004
Leticia Aviles. Cooperation, nonlinear dynamics and the levels of selection. 2004
Andre J. van der Kouwe, Richard C. Burgess. Examining the dynamics of a vector representing neurophysiological state during intensive care. 2004
Bennett Levitan, Jose Lobo, Richard Schuler, Stuart A. Kauffman. Optimal organizational size in the presence of externalities. 2004
Michael J. Jacobson, Win Farrell, Kenneth Brecher, Jim Kaput, Marshall Clemens, Uri Wilensky. Education in complex systems. 2004
Vasant Honavar, Leslie Miller, Johnny Wong. Distributed knowledge networks. 2004
David A. Meyer. Complexity of allocation processes: chaos and path dependence. 2004
Tim Middelkoop, Abhijit Deshmukh. Caution! Agent based systems in operation. 2004
Dirk Holste, Hanspeter Herzel, Ivo Grosse. Entropy estimation from finite samples. 2004
Christina Stoica, Jurgen Kluver, Jorn Schmidt. In the looking glass: the self modeling of social systems. 2004
Jim Hines, Jody House. Harnessing evolution for organizational management. 2004

Yaneer Bar-Yam.
Making Things Work: solving complex problems in a complex world.
Knowledge Press. 2004

Why does the U.S. continue to lose 50,000-100,000 people each year to medical errors despite rigorous physician training and advanced technology? How could the U.S. government have spent over $3 billion in a project to redesign the Air Traffic Control System without even replacing a single part? Why do billions of dollars in assistance fail to promote development in third-world countries? Why is the U.S. military challenged by a handful of terrorists? Why are we so unhappy with our education system?

More importantly: How can we fix these problems?

Making Things Work describes how complex systems concepts can help in solving the complex problems facing us today. In easy to understand language, this book explains how effectively organizing people can solve complex problems in:

• healthcare • education • military conflict • ethnic violence and terrorism • third world development

When a problem is highly complex one person cannot solve it alone, but organizations of people can, if they know how to work together. Making Things Work explains why traditional organizations and traditional forms of control and planning are not effective for addressing these tasks. It draws on basic insights from complex systems research emergence, complexity, patterns, networks and evolution to explain how effective teams form through cooperation and competition, and how to make non-hierarchical organizations effective at their tasks.

Everyone can take away something from the practical and instructive problem-solving approach described in this book.