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At the cutting edge of the sciences, at the theoretical frontier
where breakthroughs in a broad spectrum of fields intersect, a dynamic new concept
is emerging: complexity. In this groundbreaking new book,
Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, the scientist coauthors of the highly praised
The Arrow of Time, explore how complexity in mathematics, physics, biology,
chemistry, and even the social sciences is transforming not only the way we think
about the universe, but also the very assumptions that underlie conventional science.
Coveney and Highfield define complexity as a watchword for a
new way of thinking about the behavior of interacting units, whether they are
atoms, bits within a computer, ants in a colony, or the neurons firing in the
human brain. Complexity reaches far beyond the concept of chaos and represents
a profound shift away from the reductive principle that has guided science for
centuries, fostering a new synthesis of concepts across many disciplines. Frontiers
of Complexity traces the history of how such giants of science as Charles
Babbage, George Boole, Richard Feynman, Kurt Godel, John von Neumann, Ilya Prigogine,
and Alan Turing built on each other's work, opening the way for the leap from
reductionism to complexity. As Coveney and Highfield
so lucidly demonstrate, the rise of the electronic computer provided both the
key and the catalyst to our exploration of complexity. A new generation of computers
that runs on light, manipulates fuzzy logic, and exploits the bizarre properties
of quantum mechanics promises to deepen our understanding of complexity.
The advances we have already witnessed are spectacular. The
authors take us inside a laboratory where scientists are evolving the genetic
molecules that enabled life to emerge on earth. Coveney and Highfield describe
the work of others who are generating universes in cyberspace filled with a vast
array of organisms that compete for resources, reproduce, mutate, and evolve.
We witness the utterly realistic behavior of a school of virtual fish -- computer-generated
replicas that have been trained to swim gracefully, hunt for food, and scatter
at the approach of a leopard shark. Already scientists
have accurately modeled the brain of a bee, with its one million neurons. Others
are beginning to reproduce the way the human brain processes vision, and even
the way our genetic code can carry out "calculations" within every cell
of our bodies. How much longer will it be before the computer unravels the mysteries
of the one hundred billion neurons of the human brain? Compelling
in its clarity, vast in its scope, far-reaching in its implications, vibrant with
the excitement of new discovery, Frontiers of Complexity is an arresting
account of how far science has come in the past fifty years and an essential guide
to the rapidly approaching future. Dr. Peter Coveney
is a senior research scientist in the Schlumberger Cambridge Research Laboratory.
He was a lecturer in Physical Chemistry at the University of Wales, a visiting
fellow at Princeton University, and a junior research fellow at Keble College,
Oxford University. Dr. Roger Highfield is the
science editor of The Daily Telegraph in
London. He was the 1987 Medical Journalist of the Year, the 1988 Science Journalist
of the Year, winner of the specialist correspondent category of the British Press
Awards in 1989 (commended in 1991), and a winner in the first Commonwealth Media
Awards, 1994. |
