The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors (Pantheon, 2019) by SFI External Professor and Science Board member Matthew O. Jackson draws from psychology, behavioral economics, sociology, and business to take a complex systems-approach to understanding how human social networks, which hold a primary role in our daily lives, impact our personal beliefs and actions, and inform broader political and economic practices.
Emerging Syntheses in Science (
SFI Press, 2019), edited by SFI co-founder David Pines re-enlivens the debates and ground-breaking research that, in the 1980s, formed the foundation for the Santa Fe Institute. First published in 1988, this new edition includes fresh essays by SFI President David Krakauer and Distinguished Shannan Professor Geoffrey West, the late David Pines, and Stephen Wolfram, a participant in the founding meetings. The volume also includes never-before-published transcripts from the founding meetings held in 1984.
Life Finds a Way: What Evolution Teaches Us About Creativity (Basic Books, 2019) by SFI External Professor Andreas Wagner compares the tools of biological evolution with those of human innovation to make sense of the creative process happing in our minds all the time. Similar mechanisms underlie the processes of a musician rearranging musical phrases, a DNA strand coding multiple proteins, and a moth darkening over time. And as with genetic drift and DNA recombination, human creativity requires exploration and failure in order to find success.
From the Spring, 2019 Parallax Newsletter. To subscribe to the paper newsletter, email news@santafe.edu