Complexity (M. Mitchell Waldrop)
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Complexity (M. Mitchell Waldrop)
| Full title | Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos |
|---|---|
| Author | M. Mitchell Waldrop |
| Published | 1992 |
| Pages | 380 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Waldrop’s account of the founding of the Santa Fe Institute — which belongs on this list less for the science than as a case study in deliberately building an institution with no departments, to see whether that changes what gets discovered. |
Complexity (M. Mitchell Waldrop)
Where I heard about it
- The replies to Sarah Guo — named in answer to her question on X (March 2025): “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” The full list of replies is on Is There a Book… (tweet).
Connections
- Complexity — the concept page; this card is the book, disambiguated.
- Scientific Research — SFI as an institutional experiment, which is the thread’s actual question.
- The Dream Machine — same author, same interest in the funder-and-institution layer.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.