On Jul 24, 2006, at 6:51 AM, Russell Standish wrote: > > > But more seriously, which university has a department of complex > systems? Theres the Santa Fe Institute, and possibly NECSI, but where > else? >
SFI and NECSI make room for visiting students at different levels, but neither are degree-granting. In the social realm, UCLA has a new Human Complex Systems institute that is going gangbusters in its first year, but it is undergrad only right now, though the interest there hints that the younger generation is into it already. At NECSI the Portland State University computer science program drew some student attention, since they can cobble together complexity like courses of study. Couple of student emails on the NECSI list pointed to other possibillities, like George Mason University's Center for Social Complexity. Otherwise it seems like academic pockets in various domains. For instance, at NECSI I met a student who works with Reuben McDaniels, prof at the University of Texas biz school, known on the Plexus list for his work applying complexity org development to health care. He works with their Prigogine Center, though I'm not sure what they do. I'm sure there are many other centers and institutes and academic pockets that folks on the list know of as well, and many others in other countries. David Lane's group at Reggio-Modena comes to mind. It's an interesting "shreds and patches" kind of situation that probably reflects the scattered and multi-perspectival nature of the field at the moment that motivated Owen's original email. I've been disappointed that anthro hasn't been more active, though there are some good SFI external faculty examples like Steve Lansing in ecology and Doug White in networks and George Gummerman and Tim Kohler on the ancient Anasazi (a questionable label now, since it is a Navajo term and some Pueblo people object). Shortly before electricity was invented, when I was in grad school, we learned about our "holistic" perspective and the "emergent" nature of our work and how our goal was to learn a new perspective "bottom-up," though that term we didn't use. Sander van der Leeuw, former SFI faculty, took over the department at Arizona State and looks like he's changing things in a complex direction, so maybe it's starting to happen. We never did anything rigorous and general with the concepts in the old days, instead learned them by reading ethnographic case after ethnographic case, like lawyers learn legal reasoning. You'd think the field would notice the parallels. If anyone's interested, Lansing did an overview of complexity for the Annual Review of Anthropology a few years back, and I did a piece in Complexity that complexifies some ethnographic issues (We Have Met the Other and We're All Nonlinear) that's on my web page. And now, for something completely different, this week's Economist has a feature on evolutionary economics: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7189617 Mike ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
