
Complexity
A Guided Tour
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Narrated by:
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Kathleen Godwin
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By:
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Melanie Mitchell
About this listen
What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? In this remarkably clear and companionable audiobook, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them.
Skillfully narrated, Complexity: A Guided Tour - winner of the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science - offers a wide-ranging overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for its contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.
©2011 Melanie Mitchell. Produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Melanie Mitchell (P)2024 Echo Point Books & Media, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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think beyond the details
- By reggie p on 04-13-04
By: Fritjof Capra
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Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
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Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
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The Information
- A History, a Theory, a Flood
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality - the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born.
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Brilliant book, heroic reader, better in print?
- By A reader on 03-12-11
By: James Gleick
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The Patterning Instinct
- A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning
- By: Jeremy Lent, Fritjof Capra - foreword
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trailblazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society.
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Wonderful book! Changes your perspective on the human race and where we might be going.
- By Susan on 03-29-18
By: Jeremy Lent, and others
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Making Sense of Chaos
- A Better Economics for a Better World
- By: J. Doyne Farmer
- Narrated by: J. Doyne Farmer
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Many books have been written about J. Doyne Farmer and his work, but this is the first in his own words. It presents a manifesto for how to do economics better. In this tale of science and ideas, Farmer fuses his profound knowledge and expertise with stories from his life to explain how we can bring a scientific revolution to bear on the economic conundrums facing society.
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A Very Important Book and a Great Story of Perseverence
- By Amazon Customer on 02-20-25
By: J. Doyne Farmer
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Free Agents
- How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
- By: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose.
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Adding Clarity to Agency
- By Brad Caldwell on 10-10-23
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Systems Biology
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Eberhard O. Voit
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Systems biology came about as growing numbers of engineers and scientists from other fields created algorithms which supported the analysis of biological data in incredible quantities. Whereas biologists of the past had been forced to study one item or aspect at a time, due to technical and biological limitations, it suddenly became possible to study biological phenomena within their natural contexts.
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Not suitable for audiobook
- By Kindle Customer on 12-07-20
By: Eberhard O. Voit
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The Alignment Problem
- Machine Learning and Human Values
- By: Brian Christian
- Narrated by: Brian Christian
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us - and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole - and appear to assess black and white defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And autonomous vehicles on our streets can injure or kill.
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Required reading for any AI course
- By ehan ferguson on 11-16-20
By: Brian Christian
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The Joy of x
- A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Many people take math in high school and promptly forget much of it. But math plays a part in all of our lives all of the time, whether we know it or not. In The Joy of x, Steven Strogatz expands on his hit New York Times series to explain the big ideas of math gently and clearly, with wit, and insight.
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Great listen
- By cameron on 08-16-19
By: Steven Strogatz
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Patterns of Connection
- Essential Essays from Five Decades
- By: Fritjof Capra
- Narrated by: Gareth Richards
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Fritjof Capra, scientist, educator, activist, and accomplished author, presents the evolution of his thought over five decades in Patterns of Connection. First introduced in the late 1950s to the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, Capra quickly intuited the connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy - resulting in his first book, the best-selling The Tao of Physics.
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Excellent book, perfectly fine narrator
- By Allison on 09-04-22
By: Fritjof Capra