On a very normal day, seemingly out of the blue, the stock market takes a dive - a tremendous crash that sends stock brokers hurling out of windows in despair. What happened?

On a very normal stretch of geological time, the small animals barely worthy of the title "living", suddenly explode with variety and fast increasing complexity. Why?

Birds tend to fly in perfect flocks of fluid motion - it looks almost as if the flock was a single living entity. How is this beautiful unison of flight achieved with no central control?

You ponder on a problem for days, laboriously looking at it from every conceivable angle, and still the solution remains beyond your grasp - until a fleeting thought inspires the solution to surface in what can only be described as a sudden epiphany. What just took place?

And above all, what do all these seemingly separate questions have to do with the book I'm supposed to be reviewing?

"Complexity - the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos" by M. Mitchell Waldrop is an adventure in science, into the discovery and exploration of the most profoundly unifying, promising idea of the 21st century. All the questions I started out with bear an underlying similarity in their answers, and that is the subject of the science of Complexity.

Complexity research ranges from the emergence of first life-forms on Earth and the unpredictable behaviour of weather systems to the anticipation of the behaviour of large crowds of people, or flocks of animals. The most fascinating aspect of all these subjects is that they all hold uncanny underlying similarities - there seems to be a law of nature down there under the surface, just waiting to be put in words.


What this book is NOT

It is not an end-it-all treatise of the subject of complexity. The optimal audience for this book is the layman reader, or the interested under-graduate, with very little idea of what this "complexity" is. The book may also hold an appeal to any reader interested in the process of science in the making.

This was actually the first popular science book I read, and responsible for lighting that burning desire in me to learn more. (I believe this might be the perfect gift for your high-school age kid who was struggling to find motivation for his science studies.)

As an appetizer to introduce you to the idea of complexity, Waldrop's book works brilliantly, but if you start out expecting to get a full course, you'll be disappointed - an appetizer after all, no matter how good, is just an appetizer.


What you can expect

Waldrop wrote this book almost as an adventure novel - it delves into the subject through describing the paths the "main characters" of the story (prominent scientists, including a few Nobel Laureates) to the discovery of this fleeting commonality behind such divergent phenomena.

They all end up in the melting pot of the ideas of complexity, the Santa Fe Institute. Waldrop does a commendable job in conveying the excitement of discovery, and the inspiring atmosphere of brilliant minds coming together. For me, at least, this book was a real page turner. It read better than any fiction that I had read in a long while.

For me, idea-wise, the most memorable parts of the book where in Chris Langton's story - his cellular automata, and the "discovery" of artificial life. Also John Holland's work on artificial intelligence was intriguing, as was Stuart Kauffman's ideas on the emergence of life.

I gladly recommend this book - only one warning; you'll be talking your friends to death about "emergence" for days, maybe weeks to come....

Get it, and enjoy!

Recommended: Yes