Complexity: A Guided Tour Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book is easily the best introductory "guided tour" of complexity I know of.It has several key strengths:

1. Mitchell covers many of the major topics which can reasonably be grouped under the umbrella of complexity, so the breadth of the book is excellent.For my benefit and yours, here are the main topics covered, roughly in the order they appear in the book: chaos, information, thermodynamics, Godel's theorem, Turing machines, evolution, genetics, measures of complexity, fractals, self-reproducing automata, genetic algorithms, cellular automata, artificial life, information processing in living systems, analogy-finding algorithms, game theory, networks, power laws, metabolic scaling, random boolean networks, and historical foundations of complex systems research (cybernetics, general systems theory, synergetics, etc.).This long list leaves out some significant complexity topics, but Mitchell's scope is still plentiful for an introductory guided tour.

2. The topics are covered in sufficient depth to clearly convey the key concepts, which reflects the fact that Mitchell is a scientist who really knows the subject.Though the treatment is certainly introductory, rest assured that this isn't a superficial journalistic popularization which drops lots of names and terminology without getting into any real content.

3. Mitchell's writing style is concise and precise, but still friendly and not at all terse.The book is quite easy to read if you have a decent background in general science.

4. General readers will appreciate that there isn't much formal math in the book, yet Mitchell explains things in a way that nicely intimates the outlines of the math for readers who are math-savvy.

5. Mitchell's presentation is sober and honest.She naturally highlights the potentials and promise of complex systems science, but she also openly acknowledges its past dead ends and likely future limitations.

6. There are biographical notes interspersed throughout the book, which adds a nice human touch.

For completeness, I'll note that I did notice a few technical errors in Mitchell's initial discussion of immunology.But these errors don't invalidate the general message, and can be overlooked, considering the overall excellence of the book.

The bottom line is that I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in complexity (how could you not be?).It's a perfect introduction for beginners, and people well-versed in the subject will also appreciate the convenience of having a high-quality broad overview within the covers of just one book.

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