Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life

by John H. Miller, Scott E. Page

This book provides the first clear, comprehensive, and accessible account of complex adaptive social systems, by two of the field's leading authorities. Such systems--whether political parties, stock markets, or ant colonies--present some of the most intriguing theoretical and practical challenges confronting the social sciences. Engagingly written, and balancing technical detail with intuitive explanations, Complex Adaptive Systems focuses on the key tools and ideas that have emerged in the field since the mid-1990s, as well as the techniques needed to investigate such systems. It provides a detailed introduction to concepts such as emergence, self-organized criticality, automata, networks, diversity, adaptation, and feedback. It also demonstrates how complex adaptive systems can be explored using methods ranging from mathematics to computational models of adaptive agents.


John Miller and Scott Page show how to combine ideas from economics, political science, biology, physics, and computer science to illuminate topics in organization, adaptation, decentralization, and robustness. They also demonstrate how the usual extremes used in modeling can be fruitfully transcended.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Economics, Sociology, Computer Science, Social Science, Psychology

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

John Howard Miller, 1959-

Experiments with economic principles, c1997: t.p. (John H. Miller) p. iii (assoc. prof., economics, Carnegie Mellon U., Pittsburgh, 1989- ;Ph.D., U. of Michigan)

Reviews

[Amin]

"English below"

نیمه اول کتاب به عنوان یک کتاب علمی برای عموم، نیمه جذابی است اما رفته رفته در نیمه دوم ظاهری آکادمیک و با جذابیت کمتر پیدا می کنند. چرا که سرشار از مثالها و مدلهایی می شود که برای کتاب عمومی جزئیات بیش از حد دارند و برای کتاب آکادمیک چندان کاربردی نیستند، چرا که به تصویرسازی و البته شبیه سازی کامپیوتری برای فهم بیشتر نیاز دارند

برای مطالعه مقدماتی بهتر برای درک موضوع کتاب پیچیدگی از ملانی میچل کتابی مفیدتر و با قلمی منسجم تر است گرچه از زاویه علوم کامپیوتر به مسئله پرداخته است و انگیزه من برای مطالعه این کتاب همین امر بود تا از زاویه علوم سیاسی و اجتماعی به موضوع بپردازم، نیازی که در انتها به شیوه ای رضایت بخش برآورده نشد

The first half is an enjoyable reading as a general science book, but it gets more and more academic, and less and less interesting in the second half; especially since lots of the examples and models described are too detailed to be interesting for general audience and not practical to be in an academic book, since they need more visual representation or simulation exercises to comprehend! For a better introduction to the subject "Complexity: a guided tour" is a better and well-written book. However, it is a book from a computer science perspective and I chose this one to have a better understanding of complex adaptive systems in social and political science, which at the end was a bit disappointing.