Emerging Syntheses in Science
Back-of-Book Information
During the past decade, scientists and engineers have increasingly turned their attention to scientific and societal problems that are both complex and inherently transdisciplinary, while social, behavior, and biological seientists have become increasingly aware that the mathematical tools and physical ideas developed in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems, learning algorithms, and spin glasses might be applicable to the complex systems they study. The result has been a striking convergence in science and scholarship. New subjects, highly interdisciplinary in traditional terms, are emerging which often represent the frontier of research. In any of these areas of research, a common element is the explosive growth of computer capability and of computer-related concepts. Such emerging syntheses in science were addressed by leading scientists during the founding workshops of the Santa Fe Institute. The reader will find these proceedings an account of a remarkable range of novel syntheses, which share in common a focus on complex systems.
About the Editor
David Pines is Professor of Physics in the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has made pioneering contributions to an understanding of many-body problems in condensed matter and nuclear physics, and to theoretical astrophysics. Editor of Reviews of Modern Physics, and Addison-Wesley's book series Frontiers in Physics Dr. Pines is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a past Board Chairman of the Santa Fe Institute and currently serves as Co-Chairman of the Institute's Science Board. Dr. Pines received the Eugene Feenberg Memorial Medal Contributions to Many-Body Theory in 1985, the P.A.M. Dirac Silver Medal for the Advancement of Theoretical Physics in 1984, and the Friemann Prize in Condensed Matter Physics in 1983.