What is history anyway? Most people would say it’s what happened in the past, but how far back does the past extend? To the first written sources? To what other forms of evidence reveal about pre-literate civilizations? What does that term mean—an empire, a nation, a city, a village, a family, a lonely hermit somewhere? Why stop with people: shouldn’t history also comprise the environment in which they exist, and if so on what scale and how far back? And as long as we’re headed in that direction, why stop with the earth and the solar system? Why not go all the way back to the Big Bang itself? There’s obviously no consensus on how to answer these questions, but even asking them raises another set of questions about history: who should be doing it? Traditionally trained historians, for whom archives are the only significant source? Historians willing to go beyond archives, who must therefore rely on, and to some extent themselves become, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, archeologists? But if they’re also going to take environments into account, don’t they also have to know something about climatology, biology, paleontology, geology, and even astronomy? And how can they do that without knowing some basic physics, chemistry, and mathematics? This inaugural volume of the SFI Press (the new publishing arm of the Santa Fe Institute) attempts to address these questions via thoughtful essays on history written by distinguished scholars—including Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann—from across a wide range of fields.

History, Big History, & Metahistory

History

Krakauer, David C.

Historical Study & Educational Resources

SFI Press

Like many other sciences, archaeology is experiencing a data deluge. The recent accumulation of accessible data on early urban societies, coupled with the re-emergence of comparative studies, puts modern scholars in a position to make significant theoretical advances concerning the key episode of human social organization that provided the foundations of the contemporary world: the formation of the state.A complex systems approach—pioneered at the Santa Fe Institute—involves fully interdisciplinary explorations of long-debated questions. Can basic quantitative analysis of human social evolution reveal macrocultural processes? Can we understand social cohesion by way of cultural genotypes? And does the emergence of social complexity involve the creation of new potential or the realization of latent human capabilities?In this volume, many of the foremost experts in quantitative archaeology and anthropology leverage innovative methodologies—including agent-based modeling, network analysis, and theoretical applications of evolutionary biology—to push the field in new directions.“ . . . this is a stimulating book that brings together developing approaches that open out the stale discussions on the origin of complex societies in interesting new directions.” —Stephen Shennan, The Cambridge Archaeological Journal

The Emergence of Premodern States: New Perspectives on the Development of Complex Societies

Politics & Social Sciences

Sabloff, Jeremy A.

Archaeology

Santa Fe, October 1984. Many of the most accomplished creative minds in science—including four Nobel laureates—gather to create an institution unlike any other: where unconventional thinking flourishes and disciplinary boundaries fall away. From this meeting emerged some of the most generative research programs of the last three decades, including the physics of living systems, the mathematics of society, quantitative archaeology, the nature of mind, fundamentals of complex systems theory—and the implications of all of these on the future. The original vision of a boundary-spanning research center became what Nature has called “that mecca of multidisciplinary complexity studies,” the Santa Fe Institute. With a new introduction by David Krakauer and Geoffrey West and an afterword by Stephen Wolfram, as well as never-before-published transcripts of the discussion sessions, this volume of seminal essays lays the foundation for thirty years of complexity science—and outlines challenges for thirty more.

Emerging Syntheses in Science: Proceedings of the Founding Workshops of the Santa Fe Institute

Pines, David

Science & Math

Why do computers use so much energy? What are the fundamental physical laws governing the relationship between the precise computation run by a system, whether artificial or natural, and how much energy that computation requires? Can we learn how to improve efficiency in computing by examining how biological computers manage to be so efficient? The time is ripe for a new synthesis of nonequilibrium physics, computer science, and biochemistry.This volume integrates pure and applied concepts from these diverse fields, with the goal of cultivating a modern, nonequilibrium thermodynamics of computation.

The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines

Computers & Technology

Wolpert, David H.

Computer Science

In recent years, the digitization of legal texts and developments in the fields of statistics, computer science, and data analytics have opened entirely new approaches to the study of law. This volume explores the new field of computational legal analysis, an approach marked by its use of legal texts as data. The emphasis herein is work that pushes methodological boundaries, either by using new tools to study longstanding questions within legal studies or by identifying new questions in response to developments in data availability and analysis.By using the text and underlying data of legal documents as the direct objects of quantitative statistical analysis, Law as Data introduces the legal world to the broad range of computational tools already proving themselves relevant to law scholarship and practice, and highlights the early steps in what promises to be an exciting new approach to studying the law.

Law as Data: Computation, Text, and the Future of Legal Analysis

Livermore, Michael A.

Research

This volume is a record of the proceedings of the first InterPlanetary Festival, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June of 2018 by the Santa Fe Institute, birthplace of complexity science. An annual free public event, the InterPlanetary Festival combines an exploration of complexity science and technological innovation with a summer festival full of music, film, art, food, drinks, and more. The Festival is just one aspect of the broader InterPlanetary Project, which is equal parts conference, festival, and research program. The first project of its kind to combine celebration with experimentation, and conversation with analysis, the InterPlanetary Project seeks to be nothing less than a whole-planet project—beyond borders, beyond politics, beyond economics—to activate the collective intelligence of our first planet: Earth.

InterPlanetary Transmissions: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's First InterPlanetary Festival: Genesis

Technology

Over the last three decades, the Santa Fe Institute and its network of researchers have been pursuing a revolution in science.Ignoring the boundaries of disciplines and schools and searching for novel fundamental ideas, theories, and practices, this international community integrates the full range of scientific inquiries that will help us to understand and survive on a complex planet. This volume collects essays from the past thirty years of research, in which contributors explain in clear and accessible language many of the deepest challenges and insights of complexity science.Explore the evolution of complex systems science with chapters from Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow, as well as numerous pioneering complexity researchers, including John Holland, Brian Arthur, Robert May, Richard Lewontin, Jennifer Dunne, and Geoffrey West.

Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute, 1984–2019 (Compass)

Holland, John H.

Lewontin, Richard

GELL-MANN, MURRAY

West, Geoffrey

Arthur, W. Brian

Arrow, Kenneth

Dunne, Jennifer

Morrowitz, Harold

Flack, Jessica C.

Physics

The specter of information is haunting sciences. With these words, Wojciech H. Zurek invited fellow scientists to attend the 1989 Santa Fe Institute workshop on which this proceedings volume is based. Thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, the quantum theory of measurement, the physics of computation, dynamical systems, molecular biology, and computer science—information remains central to the 32 essays collected in this new edition of Complexity, Entropy & the Physics of Information. 
Like the original meeting, this two-volume set explores the connections between quantum and classical physics, information and its transfer, and computation—and their significance for the formulation of physical theories. A newly written preface from attendee Seth Lloyd contextualizes the significance of this record of a meeting that marked the intersection of information, physics, complexity, and computation.

Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information: Volume I

Kauffman, Stuart A.

Lloyd, Seth

Zurek, Wojciech H.

Part of the SFI Press’s Archive series, making affordable editions of past Santa Fe Institute publications globally available, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information emerged from a 1989 SFI meeting of the same name organized by editor Wojciech H. Zurek. This two-volume reprint not only explores the connections between quantum and classical physics, information and its transfer, computation, and their significance for the formulation of physical theories, but also considers the origins and evolution of information-processing entitles, their complexity, and the manner in which they analyzed their perceptions to form models of the universe. Information, physics, complexity, quantum, and computation all meet in these 16 essays from contributors such as Murray Gell-Mann, James B. Hartle, Tommaso Toffoli, and L. A. Khalfin.

Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information: Volume II

This volume is a record of the Santa Fe Institute’s second InterPlanetary Festival, nicknamed Stardust, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June of 2019. The InterPlanetary Festival fuses an exploration of complex systems and technological innovation with music, film, art, food, drinks, and more.\nDuring the Summer of Stardust, as the world observed the fiftieth anniversary of the momentous Apollo 11 Moon landing, the Festival celebrated human ingenuity and pondered what the next half-century might hold. Conversations centered on building other worlds — imaginatively in literature, experimentally in simulation and games, and literally in architectural design. Attendees and panelists wrestled with topics as wide-ranging as time, the future of cities, and the meaning of intelligence.\nIn this book, transcripts of the Festival panel discussions, each paired with new introductions by contributors including physicist Sean Carroll, poet, artist, and curator Anaïs Duplan, and speculative-fiction writer Rebecca Roanhorse, commemorate the creativity and insight generated at this one-of-a-kind cosmic event.

InterPlanetary Transmissions: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's Second InterPlanetary Festival: Stardust

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