Why Things Are How Complexity Theory Answers Life's Toughest Questions

by Roetzheim, William

• ISBN13: 9781933769264
• ISBN10: 1933769262
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-01
• Publisher: Level 4 Press, Inc.

Summary

Traditional science focuses on understanding the individual pieces of a problem. How does a cell work? How does a neuron work? How does an individual investor behave? Tremendous strides have been made in answering these questions.The next logical step was to take knowledge about the individual components, and use that knowledge to understand the behavior of groups of components. That didn't work, but complexity theory may hold the answers. Many scientists believe that complexity theory may answer many of life's most puzzling mysteries. Complexity theory includes areas such as chaos theory, genetic programming, and fractals. William Roetzheim discusses complexity theory in an understandable manner that will appeal to all audiences. This book takes the approach of explaining concepts through the use of examples and demonstrations rather than mathematics and theory.

Author Biography

William Roetzheim has been a frequent lecturer and instructor at multiple technology conferences and two California universities

Table of Contents

Table of Contents	p. V
Introduction to Complexity	p. 1
Stability, Chaos and Complexity	p. 9
Emergent Behavior	p. 43
One-Dimensional Cellular Automatons	p. 61
Multi-Dimensional Cellular Automatons	p. 79
Programming with Genetic Algorithms	p. 93
Concluding Notes	p. 141
Complexity Philosophy as a Computing Paradigm	p. 155
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.