Owen Densmore wrote: > Several of us have been attending the SFI Summer School this year. > One thing that has stood out for me is that there are very few > appropriate texts on the detailed, seminal ideas within complexity. > Either the books are "popular" or they are technical/formal enough, > but without broad view of complexity itself. Indeed, they may be > *too* advanced in their speciality for the broad use complexity > wishes to make. > > One example today was the intersection of computational theory and > statistical mechanics given by Cris Moore: > A Tale of Two Cultures: Phase Transitions in > Physics and Computer Science > Here are the slides: http://www.santafe.edu/~moore/Oxford.pdf > You'd be unlikely to find a book bridging algorithms, computational > complexity, and statistical mechanics. > > This leads me to believe that seminal papers are likely to be a good > solution for bridging the various cultures, hopefully with some that > *do* bridge gaps between specialties. > > Sooo -- gentle reader -- this brings me to a request: I'd like to > start a collection of seminal papers who's goal is to bridge the gap > between popular books and over-specialized texts, which are formal > enough to be useful for multi-discipline complexity work. This may > be daft, but I think not. > > As an example, I'd say Shannon's 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of > Communication would be good. > > -- Owen > > > > ============================================================ > 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 > > > > Owen,
I took advantage of the CNLS printer to print LOTS of articles about complexity that seemed to do more than just gestate in utero (let's all feminize seminal). Before I toss them all, I will pass on a few suggestions for the list. Do you want the titles annotated? -Merle- ============================================================ 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
