We live in a complex world — one that is increasingly connected, evolving, technological, volatile, and potentially poised for catastrophe. And yet we continue to treat the world as if it were simple. Our dominant frameworks are still linear, unchanging, and disconnected, assuming Earth’s resources are infinitely exploitable. Complexity science offers a paradigm-shifting approach.
In The Complex World, the newest book from the SFI Press, SFI President David C. Krakauer offers readers a concise and comprehensive overview of complexity science, following its roots from the nineteenth-century science of machines — evolved and engineered — into the twentieth-century science of emergent systems. He describes how complexity science provides the first scientific framework for understanding the purposeful universe by combining insights from evolution, computation, nonlinear dynamics, and statistical physics.
“The application of complexity scholarship to global commons problems, including disease, climate, conflict, and political economy, is likely to be an essential component in any effort to ensure the prosperity and survival of life on Earth,” writes Krakauer. “The integrated nature of complexity science aligns with the connected nature of the modern world. Complexity science will be essential to all future projects that aim to escape terminal planetary decline.”
Originally included as the introduction to Volume I of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science, published earlier this year by the SFI Press, The Complex World is an affordable and accessible entry point for those new to complexity science. For readers who are already familiar, the book offers a new synthesis of the history, fields, and approaches that comprise complexity science. All readers will encounter an entirely new framing of nature, the human role in the natural and technological worlds, and what it means to prosper on a living planet.
The Complex World is currently available in paperback. Hardcover and ebook versions will follow later this year.
SFI’s 29th annual Stanisław Ulam Memorial Lecture Series explores ideas related to the themes of this book. Krakauer will open the two-night series on Tuesday, September 17, with a book signing at 6:30 p.m. and a lecture at 7:30 p.m. MT. The following evening, Wednesday, September 18, Krakauer chairs a panel with Melanie Mitchell, Sara Walker, Geoffrey West, and Thalia Wheatley to discuss their diverse perspectives on our complex universe. In-person tickets are available for free by reservation. The talks will also be live-streamed via SFI’s YouTube and other social media channels.
Book Details
The Complex World by David C. Krakauer
- $5.99 (Paperback)
- Publisher and imprint: The SFI Press Scholars Series
- 208 pages
- Paperback ISBN: 978-1-947864-62-7
- Publication Date: September 16, 2024