SFI Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West offers a glimpse of the mathematical regularities scientists are finding in the fabric of complex biological and social systems, from the smallest organisms to the largest cities, and asks what processes could have given rise to these patterns.
Watch the SFI video interview with Geoffrey West (7 minutes)
"Socioeconomic systems, cities, companies -- those phenomena grew out of biology, they are part of biology, they came through us," says West. "One of the deep questions is, was there a new dynamic that evolved when human beings started talking to one another? When they started communicating and forming communities and acting together. Is that biological, actually, or is it something new?"
West goes on explore the mathematical regularities found in biological systems and human social systems, and wonders how "emergent rules" that must underlie those regularities could have evolved through natural selection.
The "The Hidden Laws in Biological and Social Systems" project is part of a three-year SFI research program, supported by the John Templeton Foundation, that seeks a deeper quantitative and theoretic understanding of the nature of complexity in the social and biological worlds.
More about SFI's "Principles of Complexity" research program supported by the John Templeton Foundation
The program also includes SFI research into the "Evolution of Complexity and Intelligence on Earth" (watch the video) and the "Emergence of Complex Human Societies" (watch the video), as well as development of a complex systems curriculum called the "Complexity Explorer."
Watch videos of lectures from SFI's 2012 scientific symposium on the "Principles of Complexity" (August 6, 2012)
Read an article in the Templeton Foundation's "Templeton Report" about SFI's research
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