Waubonsee Community College

A crude look at the whole, the science of complex systems in business, life, and society, John H. Miller

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

A crude look at the whole

bibliography

919041818

John H. Miller

the science of complex systems in business, life, and society

"Imagine trying to understand a stained glass window by breaking it into pieces and examining it one shard at a time. While you could probably learn a lot about each piece, you would have no idea about what the entire picture looks like. This is reductionism--the idea that to understand the world we only need to study its pieces--and it is how most social scientists approach their work. In [this book], social scientist and economist John H. Miller shows why we need to start looking at whole pictures. For one thing, whether we are talking about stock markets, computer networks, or biological organisms, individual parts only make sense when we remember that they are part of larger wholes. And perhaps more importantly, those wholes can take on behaviors that are strikingly different from that of their pieces"--Amazon.com

Introduction: True places -- From so simple a beginning: interactions -- From flash crashes to economic meltdowns: feedback -- From one to many: heterogeneity -- From Six Sigma to novel cocktails: noise -- From scarecrows to slime molds: molecular intelligence -- From bees to brains: group intelligence -- From lawn care to racial segregation: networks -- From heartbeats to city size: scaling -- From water temples to evolving machines: cooperation -- From stones to sand: self-organized criticality -- From neutrons to life: a complex trinity -- Epilogue: The learn'd astronomer