Catastrophe Theory. Springer-Verlag (Berlin). ISBN 3 540 16199 6
Catastrophe theory describes (and classifies) the types of singularities that can occur with the 'emergence' of thresholds in response to smooth changes.
Results from the statistical physics of phase transitions (not discussed in this book) show that some (or even many) such transitions involve interactions at all scales and thus lie outside the classes considered in catastrophe theory.
How Nature Works: The science of self-organized criticality. Springer Verlag (New York).
Bak is the co-inventor of the 'sand-pile model' which he believes provides a paradigm for 'how nature works'. Personally (IGE) I remain unconvinced.
Linked: how everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science and everyday life. Plume (Penguin: NY)
This is a non-technical description of network analysis and its applications. The end-notes are a valuable source of references to original work in this area.
Algebraic Graph Theory. CUP
This is a mathematical textbook on algebraic techniques for characterising graphs and networks.
Complex Systems. CUP (Cambridge, UK). ISBN 0 521 46245 2
The articles in this volume cover many of the main strands of complexity.
Ubiquity: the science of history - or why the world is simpler than we think.
Buchanan is a convert to Per Bak's view of self-organised criticality as a way of understanding much of the world. He emphasises the role of contingency (cascading effects of small causes).
The theme of contingency is important in evolution with the importance of contingency argued by S.J. Gould (Wonderful Life: The Burgess shale and the nature of history) with a counter-view put by S. Conway Morris (The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess shale and the rise of animals OUP, 1998).
The Science of Disasters: Climate Disruptions, Heart Attacks and Market Crashes. (Springer Verlag Berlin).
The title pretty much sums up the content. In the area where I have some competence (IGE) the work seems sound. Overall, the apparently disparate topics seem to hang together.
The Hubble Wars (Harper Collins) ISBN: 0-06-092629-5 (pbk)
This is an account of the early days of the Hubble Space Telescope, written by the deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The book takes a historical perspective, noting that the two big advances in astronomical resolution were from 60 arc seconds (human eye) to 6 arc seconds (Galileo's telescope), and from about 1 or 2 arc seconds (best ground-based) to 0.1 arc seconds (HST). Most of the 3 centuries of progress in between was in sensitivity, not resolution. Each chapter, begins with a substantial extract from Galileo. The other comparison that is quoted is the advice to the author about the value of writing the book including describing NASA as so thoroughly bureaucratized as to give the Curial Inquisition a good name. Much of the account in the book serves to support this last comparison.
The book covers the trials and conflicts arising from the mis-ground main mirror, as well as the early science results that were achieved in spite of the difficulties. It contains, perhaps, many lessons to be learned about the conduct of 'big science' and a lot of discussion about what constitutes good and bad communication of science. Overall, it's a great read.
The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World. Penguin (London).
This is a free-ranging discussion, generally non-mathematical, of many aspects of complexity.
One of the major strands of discussion is that the DNA in our chromosomes does not per se provide a blueprint for the organism. It is the combination of the DNA code and the decoding mechanism that produces the organism.
(A simple example of the importance of code and decoder is given by the perverse pass-time of wrting fragments of computer code that are meaningful in two different computer languages.)
Investigations. OUP (Oxford). ISBN 0 19 512104 X
This book dicusses the origins and evolution of life and uses this perspective to consider more general complex systems.
Two important concepts that he introduces are:
Life as autocatalytic chemcial cycle;
The emergent possible: the available phase space expands
as each new chemical-compound/gene-complex/technical-innovation
creates the possibility for new interactions with what previously
existed.
The Essence of Chaos. U.C.L. Press (London). ISBN 185728 454 2 PB
This is a very readable account of the basics of the phemomena known as chaos. The book includes some description of Lorenz's own role in the development, and has a reprint of his talk: Predictability: does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?
Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease: Past Patterns, Uncertain Futures. CUP (Cambridge, UK)
This is not a book about complex systems science although it does note the potential of complexity theory for shedding light on some of the issues. Apart from the explicit topic, this book is a beautiful example of the need to take a systems approach to complicated problems. For example, he notes the differing perspectives of a doctor with a particular patient, a public health official managing issues such as antibiotic resistance, immunisation programs etc, and and evolutionary biologist studying the co-evolution of diseases and societies.
Critical Phenomena in Natural Sciences: Chaos, fractals, self-organization and disorder: concepts and tools. Springer (Berlin)
This book is really about statistical physics rather than complex systems science. However since many aspects of complex systems science draw on concepts from statistical physics, this book is a valuable resource.
The topics include: power-law distributions, fractals and multi-fractals, spin models and transitions, percolation models, rupture models, power-law mechanisms, self-organized criticality, and random systems.
Introduction to percolation theory.
This is a good general introduciton to percolation theory, with mathematical descriptions, but without extensive mathematical derivations.
Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. Viking. ISBN 0 670 85945 4
This is largely a history of setting up the Santa Fe Institute. The description of the process tracks the way in which the participants came to appreciate a degree ofcommonality in the complex problems in their respective fields.
Theory and Applications of Cellular Automata.World Scientific (Singapore). ISBN 9971 50 123 4 (pbk).
This is a valuable collection of reprints, many by Wolfram, but including important contributions by others.
A New Kind of Science.Wolfram Media (Champaign, Illinois). ISBN 1 57955 008 8
This work contains many pictures and reports extensive searches of behaviour of cellular automata. It adds disappointingly little to the results known in the mid 1980s (see Wolfram 1986).
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Last update: 21/8/03.