News and events at the Santa Fe Institute.
In a new paper in Nature Communications, three SFI-affiliated researchers describe a trio of paradoxical dynamics that can arise in simple microbial economies. The paper looks at just one type of scenario: a self-sufficiency model where two types of microbes are producing goods that are valuable to both themselves and others.
The Santa Fe Institute has welcomed seven new external faculty for 2017.
A theorem published this week in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics suggests that greater engagement in the international exchange can actually reinforce productivity-impeding practices that keep countries in poverty.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B features SFI research in its latest themed issue on innovations
On Tuesday, October 17, Manfred Laubichler led a panel discussion on the unprecedented ways in which human activity has shaped the planet. Watch the panel discussion here.
The newly-established SFI Press is pleased to announce the publication of its first volume, History, Big History, & Metahistory.
In his new book, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy, SFI External Professor Scott Page traces a causative path to the benefits that emerge when people possessing a variety of “cognitive repertoires” come together to think, solve, and create.
In the Middle Ages, did contracting leprosy necessarily increase a person's chances of dying? Yes, says a new paper. But it's complicated.
The Santa Fe Institute invites space enthusiasts of all ages and backgrounds to engage with the pressing problems of today by imagining the challenges of tomorrow in a series of city-wide events from October 13 through October 17.
In a two-part lecture series in Santa Fe on September 25-26, economist John Geanakoplos explored why it is that out of all economic variables, debt causes the most trouble. Watch part one of his talk here and part two here.
The body includes the brain — so what role does it play in intelligence? An SFI working group meets to explore morphological computation and a theory of embodied intelligence.
The Economy, a new SFI-inspired textbook, is published in paperback format and as a free, online interactive text. The book aims to address the gap between complex, real-world economic problems and the topics traditionally taught in first-year economics courses.
Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West presented the origin of scaling laws and their compelling implications for explaining everything from the lifecycles of companies, to a grand unified theory of sustainability on August 29, 2017. Watch his talk here.
Colleagues, friends, and family gather to remember the life and work of Harold Morowitz, and to keep moving his ideas forward.
SFI Maya Working Group meets for fifth time to produce a second book.
A June working group explored ways to model interactions between organisms and a public good, where both can diffuse in space.
Two August workshops convene physicists, computer scientists, and biologists to discuss energy flow during computation.
Sophisticated network analysis means finding relationships that often aren’t easy to see. A new algorithm from an interdisciplinary team at SFI identifies relationships not only within individual layers, but also across multiple layers.
For rulers in pre-modern states, marrying the right wife was often a path to military victory.
SFI's free online course, Introduction to Dynamical Systems and Chaos with College of the Atlantic professor David Feldman, begins September 4. Topics to be covered include: phase space, bifurcations, chaos, the butterfly effect, strange attractors, and pattern formation.