Complexity Books

Since I was a child I often wondered how this world was created and, as I gazed at a night sky, I wondered who is up there on all those planets.

A friend who was fascinated with this book encouraged me to read it and I became so engrossed with the possibilities it explores I found it hard to put down. In all my life I've never been exposed to such a unique - and convincing - argument about the origin of my world! I have mentally shot holes in the widely accepted 4 other origins of life. I'm finding it extremely difficult to fault the author on his logic despite my skeptical nature.

The fact that the author Mr. Shiller is an engineer, gives his approach a logical train of thought and development that is very hard to refute.

Don't read this ground breaking book unless you enjoy fresh thinking and a challenge to conventional wisdom. I thoroughly enjoyed it!!!

It's absolutely brilliant. Someone out there must be wondering why it has taken us so long to figure it out.

Starting with the premise that anything can be figured out,then detailing proven,accepted scientific knowledge to date and ending with coherent,logical scientific and philosophical conclusions,the book gives a fresh outlook on the origin of life and the future of the planet.

The author's knowledge and research in the fields of engineering,biology,chemistry and physics are very impressive and give creditability to his process and conclusions.

This is a book for anyone who gives serious,rational thought to the origin and future of life on the planet.

This book is as close to a theory of everything I have ever read. For all its explanations of complex scientific issues, I found it a genuine pleasure to read. Shiller puts forth his scientifically testable Rational Design Hypothesis at a time when mainstream science relegates any design theory as unscientific. His reverse engineering analysis of biological life confirms convincingly the validation of classical Darwininan evolution(of species)while at the same time questioning the whole neo-Darwinian notion of chemical evolution upon which the chemical soup theory of life's origins hangs its collective hat. I found the reasoning both meticulous and convincing. I chose to skip some of the technical details obveously included for the benefit of professional biologists. A truly refreshing treatment of important issues.

The theme that Kampis examines in Self-Modifying Systems is the self-generation of information by the nontrivial change (self-modification) of systems. Such a system is a network of many components, which have the property of being able to transform each other and organising themselves into larger components. It is this feature that makes such component systems closed to efficient cause. Component-systems, then, are not algorithmic, but this is not a reversible equation in that component-systems can, Kampis argues, give rise, in fact, to any particular algorithm. Kampis describes the difference as that between known complexity, that is to say complexity-to-be-realised, and unknown complexity, or complexity-to-be-explained. The first of these is relatively easy to realise, the second being impossible in that "a complex operation operating on components and bringing forth yet unknown and unidentified components cannot be described as an algorithm" (Kampis 1991:239).
Component-systems, therefore, have a high degree of creativity, but they also have characteristics that avoid many of the problems that other forms of nonlinear models.Kampis argues that nothing that such a process gives rise to can be predicted before hand, and no identity can be traced back to an origin. From this, Kampis states that the creation thesis emerges. This thesis can be stated in the following way:
The organisation of the world is continually self-creating; this process is at any given stage incomplete. Information about the future is not only inaccessible but does not exist in any form. Creation is a basic and general phenomenon that cannot be explained logically. (Kampis 1991: 258).
Self-creation occurs in the form of self-modification. A system that exhibits creativity, then, has to be continually redefined because, in the course of time, all variables and their interrelations will change in so far as each component is replaced by another. It is a system which will be defined (and constructed) by the very processes it undergoes. (Kampis 1991: 490).
The book unfolds, then, as a wonderfully sophisticated model to account for the very process of change and the important limitations of prediction the process of change implies. This book deserves to be one of the key texts of autopoiesis.

George Kampis follows in the ground breaking tradition of Robert Rosen. Examines the notions of reproduction and construction. His scope is wide and through. A must read for anybody interested in Rosen complexity.

As another reviewer notes, this book will be very helpful to those interested in the complexity research of theoretical biologist Robert Rosen. Whereas Rosen has a tight, highly rigorous focus on his goal in "Life Itself", Kampis paints on a somewhat broader canvas, referencing the work of many other researchers (including Rosen). However, Kampis is similarly detailed and methodical.

Kampis first describes the limits of dynamical models, and state-based approaches, including the limitations inherent in the 'canonical formalism' of mechanics.

He then goes on to introduce 'component-systems'. This is a general formal representation of a system as being composed of some number of components out of an essentially unlimited number of possible components. In component systems, the "rules" for the dynamics of the system are not independent of the components themselves. Self-modifying component systems generate new components and delete others, thereby changing the identity of the system itself. In mathematical terms, a self-modifying system is like a function f that belongs to its own domain and range ("f:f-->f"). The result is that such systems are non-algorithmic, nor are their dynamics describable in a state-based formalism (e.g., Newtonian, Hamiltonian, etc.). This has notable consequences for approaches that attempt to treat such systems as algorithmic, or via modelling their state-based dynamics. By comparison to component systems, cellular automata and similar algorithmic formal systems are entirely trivial.

Kampis devotes many chapters to what I have cursorily mentioned, and there is much, much more in this book that is worth reading. Although there is not alot of math, what is there is important to understand. It would be helpful for the interested reader to generally understand the basic notation of mechanics, first-order differential equations, basic logic, Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, Turing machines, basic set theory, system theory, a modicum of philosophy, and linguistics. Most of these aspects are fairly well-explained, so a diligent reader can pick them up as he goes along.

This is not a book of vague handwaving arguments. It will take some studious effort to read and grasp the concepts and profundity of what he presents. However, it will be well worth the effort, and afterward you will never be able to look at dynamical systems and models, complexity, and self-modifying systems, in the same way.

Although there are alot of similarities between Kampis' and Rosen's works, they are sufficiently distinct in approaches and conclusions that both are well worth reading.

One final note: the "typewriter" font used throughout may be a bit surprising to see in the 21st century, but I found it entirely legible and comfortable once I got used to it.

This is a great introduction to the ideas of Gregory Bateson, one of the most important thinkers of our times. He is able to bridge the gap between our ideas about a materialistic world and concepts of mind. He said that Western science did not explain mind, it explained mind away.

Anyone who feels that there is more to life than logic and science, but who doesn't feel comfortable with every new age quack idea, should read this book. Bateson's thesis is that aesthetics, beauty, and the sacred are as valid as ways of knowing as logic and science are, and he can back that up with real ideas about the real world.

Gregory Bateson is well known, among those with the perseverance to wrestle through his very compact prose, for his highly original synthesis of cybernetics, biology, anthropology and -- above all -- epistemology. Near the end of his one book written with a general audience in mind (Mind and Nature), he mentions his intention to continue his explorations into the realms of the sacred and the aesthetic. By the time of his death in 1980 he had written several drafts and discussed the project in depth with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, an investigator of great insight in her own right and a better writer than Gregory's devotion to formal rigor allowed him to be. This book is the end result of that collaboration, which Mary completed in 1986. Those familiar with Gregory's work will find some of his familiar themes explored in somewhat more accessible terms, along with some unexpected new ideas. As with his earlier works, Bateson often has to redefine some familiar words, and introduce new usages for others, which makes reading him a struggle, but a rewarding struggle in the long run. Those familiar with Mary Catherine's work will not be disappointed either. Her summarizing chapter which pulls together the various strands of the book and of her father's thought is a masterpiece of synthesis in its own right. And this book, which is above all about *relationships* at every level from the cellular to the cultural to the religious, is a fascinating record of the very human relationship between father and daughter. Like all of the elder Bateson's work, this one will take some time to digest. How much have I learned from it about "the epistemology of the sacred"? I expect it will take years to find out, and that I'll be revisiting this book many times while its implications work themselves out. As G.B. said, Life is a game whose purpose is discovering the rules. This volume is a voyage of discovery.

I've posted a much more in depth review at http://vinull.com/Post/2008/07/21/review-the-annotated-turing-by-charles-.aspx so this one will be short, but this book is well worth your time. Simply put, Turing deserves much credit for inventing the programmable computer and he did as a side effect to solving a math problem.

If you're like me, and not so good with the numbers, don't sweat - Petzold explains the math so even if you can't read the formula you know what it means. Anyone who has a passion for computers will enjoy this book!

Some books entertain, some inform; some confirm what you already knew, some make you change your mind about something. But then there are some books that just make you think "wow! I wish I'd written that".

For me, Charles Petzold's The Annotated Turing falls into that last category (as well, of course, as the informational category). It's a book worth reading not only for the topic itself but the way it's presented.

Petzold provides the necessary background before working through Turing's famous 1936 paper "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" with rich annotations at every stage, including biographical details.

If you are interested in the foundation of mathematics, computability, Turing's work, or even just ways of explaining mathematics in a historical context, I highly recommend this book.

Recommended for a better understanding of the current crisis facing Europe and the United States. I grew interested in the topic because everyday there is news coverage, including much in the New York Times.

I found this to be a very insightful and sensitive look at modern asylum policies in Europe. It is written for a broad audience--from political scientists to students to individuals interested in this very topical and important issue area.

This was such an exciting read.

It's accessible philosophy, wide-ranging in its scope and in-depth. Original ideas, witty observations, ancient themes.

Modern intellectual discourse is much benefitted by this book's appearance.

From an initial background of Daoist philosophy, this book first suggests that what we experience as our world reduces neither materially to atoms alone nor, spiritually, solely to idea. Its ontological status is proposed to be "inascertainable."

And its home is language, poiesis. Yet language is understood not simply as anthropocentric communication of a from-to sort between egos. Language is also the unpurposed, nonutilitarian patterns, rhythms, processes and cycles of nature, of cosmos, of the wild within and around us--and in and as our children. The (pre subject/object)liberation of these from a from-to, and from a "business deal mentality" is the emergence of renewed humanocosmic "worlding."

In the setting of this irreducible (cosmo)poiesis of which we are simultaneously parts and participant wholes, epiphenomena, condition and context, we endow the universe with, as we bespeak and embody, its/our (undivided) meaning. And meaning emerges as a new dimension of the self-organizing that reduces to none of its parts, be they mental, material or otherwise.

A tasty blend of autobiography, straightforward exposition, lyricism, political broadside and complex,sometimes dense, discursive development, this excitingly intelligent work is in the end reminiscent of the metadisciplinary prose and scholarly thoughtfulness of renaissance thinkers whose poetics, feelings, politics, epistemics, polemics and even visionary noetics are not separated.

In attempting, in its form and its content, a nondualized interpretation of, and interaction with/as, the world, this work centers on the chapter-themes of: business (and a critique of the accounting mentality via Jean Gebser), childrearing (and the value of both wilderness humanism and compassionate intelligence following Edith Cobb), ecohumanism (in a very Thomas Berry "spontaneities of the earth," vein), and higher education--as viewed in light of what Burneko calls "the global noetic repertoire."

Throughout are developed arguments and references both ancient, and postmodern, ranging from those of John Scotus Eriugena concerning the God-is-not-a what kind of via negativa, to Daoist and Greek notions of the sage as the hinge or pivot whose (no)mind turns with all prospects in their ever varying co-emergence to, yet again, the ideas of contemporary systems theoretical insights, those of Jantsch, or Bateson, for examples, pertaining to what Teilhard, in turn, has called "the building of the earth." These in turn are integrated with such postmodern ideas as those of Ulmer and Derrida. Overall, the underlying theme is of the implications of a hermeneutic, even a conversational (as contrasted with a substantialist), ontology.

This book will be invaluable and provocative to anyone interested in critique and interpretation of religious, sociopolitical, educational, and environmental issues and in nondualism, intercultural and interdisciplinary philosophical hermeneutics and the structures of consciousness.

Strewn throughout, finally, are allusions both pop and recondite, wordlore drawn from deconstructionist and Daoist rhetorics, humor, gentle ironies and hardball challenges, personal anecdotes (some of glowing warmth), multicultural puns and references, and the breadth of genuine learning and thinking in the sevice of what the author early on (too?) optimistically calls "the end of the beginning of mature consciousness on earth."

Not to be missed by serious readers, especially those with an interest in Chinese/nonwestern philosophy, in varieties of religious and of nondualist and process thinking, and in the vigorously and expansively argued prospects of a genuine--not merely ornamental--transformation of consciousness/culture: particularly with regard to its imposing utilitarian, commodificationist and objectivist demands.

The field of cellular automata (CA) is one that appears to be finite, yet unlimited, although it is a point of major debate. Where the ultimate conclusion lands depends on the fundamental origin of complexity, in particular that of intelligence. Some very sound thinkers argue that the universe itself is a complex CA, all of the phenomena we see are fundamentally explainable by a set of simple rules whereby actions are a consequence of state changes based on those rules. The apparent complexity that we perceive is due to the enormous number of objects that are involved and the number of different interactions that take place between them.
Cellular automata became an area of mainstream study when the Game of Life was developed. The fascinating feature of the game is that a small set of such simple rules can lead to what appear to be complex individual and collective behaviors. Schiff begins with the definitions of basic cellular automata, steps through the appearance of complexity and closes with some of the major arguments in favor of the literally universal applicability of CA.
The level of mathematics is fairly low; the most complex areas are the recurrence equations that define the next state and a few partial derivatives. With some additional explanation, the material is within the grasp of the second year math major. Most of the more complex mathematics can be skipped and the reader will still be able to understand and appreciate what CA are and some of the ways they can be used to model complex activities. This is the text I would use if I were to ever teach a special topics class in CA.

This book provides an excellent overview of the field of cellular automata. It brings together a broad range of concepts and ideas which have been percolating over the past 70 years. In many ways the field of cellular automata and its offshoots remind me of the principles and ideas expounded on in Thomas Kuhn's book `The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'. For this field is truly revolutionary in its ability to easily show the power of emergent properties from simple rules.

The flow of the book is easy to understand and the documentation and references are excellent. The prose is well written and the author's ability to clarify basic ideas is exceptional.

I highly recommend this book. The first chapter `Preliminaries' clearly shows the author has brought a rich scope to the presentation of the material.

Although I have been nebulously aware of the term "Cellular Automata" for about 25 years, it was not until I read the book Cellular Automata that I really understood what it entails. As a result, I have become enamored with the field and its mathematical elegance. It is unfortunate for this fascinating field of study, that it is called Cellular Automata -- a marketing disaster if you ask me.

Though Cellular Automata probably has a strict definition, you can think of it as how simple rules governing a cell (or a neuron or an ant or whatever) through time can give rise to complex ordered systems. People often think that there's some intelligent design behind the complexity we see in nature, but as this book demonstrates, all it takes is a few simple rules about what happens in a local neighborhood to give rise to systems that order themselves into amazing complexity.

The book is a comprehensive survey of the history and current state of Cellular Automata. I wish I had the time to follow through on the amazing panoply of interesting paths, papers, web sites and ideas presented to the reader, but this could easily require a lifetime of study (and computer time).

In spite of having no background in Cellular Automata, I found this book to be extremely accessible and clearly written with many illustrative examples. I read the book cover-to-cover and understood it all, which for a textbook is really saying something. For the layman, it helps to have a strong mathematical background as well as a keen interest in number theory, but none of this is necessary. One of the nice things about this book is that if for some reason you don't understand a topic such as say, the Sierpinski Triangle, the rest of the book is not predicated upon it, even if it is called back on occasion.

The only possible issue I had with the text is that complex theoretical concepts were on rare occasion difficult to follow. Such concepts were introduced in order to give readers a complete primer on the current state of CA research, but the reader has to trust that the results are as stated in the book, and that an army of Grad Students carried out all the dirty work. Step-by-step implementation is (and should be) beyond the scope of the text, although for math weenies like myself, it may have clarified certain concepts.

Highly recommended.

Don't you know Cellular Neural Networks? Read this book, even if you are not a specialist. I like it a lot, it's very interesting. I had a course project on CNN for my master in electronic engineering but I never found a so clear book in describing principles, applications and circuit realizations about CNN. Don't be scared if you can find some high level theoretical contents, they are for specialist in that field only, but they are not necessary for novices to know of CNN. Excellent!

I definitely enjoyed reading this book. I found it extremely clear and interesting. I am an electrical engineer but I am certainly not a specialist of this field. However, I catched up with the subject very quickly. And it is amazing to see how many applications these CNN have. As a matter of fact some of the discrete component circuits here described can even be realized by an electronics hobbyst like me. And I plan to do my own experiments. I admit I wasn't able to follow some parts with high level theoretical contents (some math definitely goes beyond my understanding). Nevertheless I found it very appealing. In summary I would encourage even the novices to check it out. I like it a lot.

Patricia Shaw wrote a great book because it gives a completely different view on the contribution of the "change" consultant to organizational change. Don't introduce models and schemas but initiate and fuel conversations in the organization not as a planned event but as a way of working. The strong point of this book is that Shaw lets the reader look into her consultant kitchen and takes you along with her "discoveries". It is a must read for every consultant with an urge to initiate all kind of change initiatives in organizations. And it is the most concrete example of the where the complexity 'school' from Ralph Stacey stands for I could find.
I have only one objection to this otherwise fantastic book. Shaw finds it necessary to set herself aside from all the other alternative change approaches in her last chapter. I would have liked this book even more if she just had skipped that chapter.

I really enjoyed this book. It is very readable and very practical. I have a Masters Degree in Complexity Theory and this book beautifully complimented my understanding of the power of conversations to get to the deeper complexity of issues and the limitations of our traditional workplace meetings. I have been pushing for a conversational structure to my meetings at work (I work in organisational development), discussion and development groups that I run outside work and in my interpersonal relationships.

I started off learning Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by reading Nielsen and Chuang's book in order to do research in my junior year on quantum cyptography. Despite the completeness and popularity of that book, it did not exhibit enough explanation and insights for me to be truly satisfied that quantum computation will truly take flight one day to be implementable in place of classical computation.

Recently, in my preparation for my qualifying exam in Quantum information at MIT, I commenced reading this book. The feeling was like drinking a long cool sip of water after a 10 mile run. In particular, I really like the mathematical rigor of the writers. I have known Kitaev as a clear and careful presentator while I was at CalTech as an undergrad, and this is clearly reflected in his book. I definitely would recommend this book to anyone interested in Quantum computing and quantum information, professionally or amateurishly to buy this book (and no, I was not bribed to give this review in order to pass my quals!).

The book covers classical and quantum algorithms;-- of the 250 or so, pages of text, roughly the first 50 pages are "classical", the rest quantum;-- and indeed the aim of the book is to teach the wonders of the qubit-algorithms. While other books, such as Nielsen-Chuang, serve as (more or less)comprehensive references, the present book (by Kitaev et al) is focussed on complexity. The mathematical prerequisits are minimal, but a reader with some understanding of basic ideas from CS, and from quantum theory (at the level of ch 1 in Nielsen-Chuang), will get more out of Kitaev et al. The book is a translation of a Russian 1999 original, but it is really well done, and nicely updated;-- for example, a handy appendix was added, covering elementary math terms that are used.
The book does a great job in explaining the fundamentals, both at the level of the *intuitive ideas*, as well as the mathematical proofs. The big question is why some qubit-algorithms (such as P Shor's factoring algorithm), are a lot better than classical counterparts(for example polynomial vs exponential), and a reader comes away with a good understanding of this in the end.