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Contents 1 Getting Started in Complex Systems 1.1 On the Web 1.2 Readings 1.3 Climate Change Papers

Getting Started in Complex Systems

(please add those we've missed)

On the Web

• The Santa Fe Institute
• The New England Complex Systems Institute
• ComDig -- Clearing house for Complexity related information
• Leigh Testfatsion's Complex System site (very detailed and up to date reference list, economics flavour)
• Brett Parris (Monash U, World Vision) Great listing of Complex Systems books and papers (see also his Climate Change list)

Readings

• Brian Arthur Website with many articles
  • Arthur comes from an Economics angle
• Murray Gell-Man - The Quark and the Jaguar
  • A Nobel prize winner, founding member of the Santa Fe Institute
  • Worked both on quantum physics (very small) and complex systems (very large) systems
  • Last section of this book has fascinating reading on complex systems science
• Phillip W. Anderson - More is different (Science, New Series, Vol. 177, No. 4047.)
  • A physicists perspective on the idea of symmetry, broken symmetry and where the interest lies
• John Holland - Emergence
  • Holland is the 'father' of genetic algorithm approaches, widely used as a tool in complex systems
• Stuart Kaufmann - The Origins of Order
  • Kaufmann's NK boolean network models are still actively studied as a model of complex systems and 'edge of chaos' systems
• John Miller & Scott Page - Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life
  • Focussed on modelling social systems .. has an appendix with excellent tips on building a good agent based model
• Scott Page - The Difference
  • Page spent years looking at what diversity is, and what it adds to a problem/environment
• Roger Highfield - Frontiers of Complexity
  • A primer to the historical and theoretical background to the complex systems movement
• Terry Bossomaier & David Green (COSNet members!) - Complex Systems
  • Broad-ranging look at Complex Systems, aimed at a slightly higher level than Highfield's book, both are a bit out of date now.
• Roberto Leombrunia, and Matteo Richiardi Why are economists sceptical about agent-based simulations? Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications; Volume 355, Issue 1, 1 September 2005, Pages 103-109.

Links taken from: Complex Dynamics of Urban Systems

• Dynamics of Complex Systems by Yaneer Bar-Yam, Addison-Wesley Reading, Massachusetts, 1997, ISBN 0-201-55748-7
• Complex Adaptive Systems - An introduction to computational models of social life by John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2007 ISBN-10: 0-691-12702-6
• Complex Science for a Complex World by Pascal Perez and David F. Batten ANU E Press, Canberra, 2003 ISBN 1-920942-39-4
• Sync - the emerging science of spontaneous order by Steven Strogatz, Penguin Books (paperback), London, England, 2004
• Handbook of Computational Economics Vol 2 edited By Leigh Tesfatsion and Kenneth Judd, North Holland, 2006, ISBN 100-444-51253-5

Climate Change Papers

• Martin Weitzman (2008) On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change

• James Hansen et al. (2007) Climate change and trace gases Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 365, pp. 1925–1954