Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos

by M. Mitchell Waldrop

That’s certainly the kind of metaphor that Chris Langton has in mind with artificial life: his whole point is that complex, lifelike behavior is the result of simple rules unfolding from the bottom up. And it’s likewise the kind of metaphor that influenced Arthur in the Santa Fe economics program: “If I had a purpose, or a vision, it was to show that the messiness and the liveliness in the economy can grow out of an incredibly simple, even elegant theory. That’s why we created these simple models of the stock market where the market appears moody, shows crashes, takes off in unexpected directions, and acquires something that you could describe as a personality.” While he was actually at the institute, ironically, Arthur had almost no time at all for Chris Langton’s artificial life, or the edge of chaos, or the hypothetical new second law. The economics program was taking up 110 percent of his workday as it was. But what he did hear he found fascinating. It seemed to him that artificial life and the rest captured something essential about the spirit of the institute. “Martin Heidegger once said that the fundamental philosophical question is being,” notes Arthur. “What are we doing here as conscious entities? Why isn’t the universe just a turbulent mess of particles tumbling around each other? Why are there structure, form, and pattern? Why is consciousness possible at all?”