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.

本书结合信息、进化和计算对生物进化进行了阐释，证明了计算在进化中的核心作用，并将这套计算和进化相结合的核心机制扩展到其他领域，用来解释复杂生命、结构、组织和社会秩序的形成。这是一次正在进行的重大的科学认知范式的转换，它不仅会改变科学，也会改变人类对自身境况的认知。

In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way we understand ourselves in relation to one another. "The Difference" is about how we think in groups - and how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams of people find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And why are the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the very qualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity - not what we look like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools and abilities. "The Difference" reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality.Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago "El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup. Page changes the way we understand diversity - how to harness its untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we can leverage our differences for the benefit of all.

本书是首部全面、清晰且令人易于理解地阐述复杂适应社会系统的著作，由该领域两位权威学者联袂完成。复杂适应社会系统——不论是“政治党派”、“股票市场”，还是蚂蚁群落——都体现了社会科学在理论上与实践上所面临的一些最有趣的挑战。通过引人入胜的文字描述和难易适中且附有直观解释的技术细节，本书着重介绍了自20世纪90年代中期以来在该领域出现的关键工具与思想，以及研究此类系统所需要的支撑技术。本书详细介绍了一些相关概念，比如涌现性、自组织临界性、自动机、网络、多样性、适应性以及反馈等。它还展示了如何利用从数学到适应性主体计算模型等一系列广泛的方法来探索复杂适应系统。

《探索复杂性》内容简介：耗散结构理论由于在社会经济等大范围领域中展现的广阔前景，引起了人们的极大兴趣，与协同论、突变论并称为现代科学方法论的新三论。美国著名作家托夫勒认为，这一理论“可能代表了下一次科学革命”。《探索复杂性》作者之一普利高津因提出这一理论而获得1977年诺贝尔奖，《探索复杂性》的另一作者布鲁塞尔学派主要成员尼科里斯教授，是欧洲著名的物理学家，对发展耗散结构理论做出了杰出的贡献。 书中全面地介绍了以耗散结构理论为代表的进化论物理学的最新成就，着力于打破自然科学各门类之间乃至自然科学与社会科学之间的壁垒，再次点燃科学革命之火。 《探索复杂性》内容新颖、文笔优美、深入浅出，适宜于物理学、化学、数学、生物学、医学、地质学等专业的科学工作者、大专院校师生阅读，也适宜于社会科学工作者和具有中等文化程度的读者阅读。