CSSS 2006 Beijing-Readings

CSSS 2006 Beijing Home Faculty Participants Participant´s Photos Schedule Public Lectures Content Final Details Readings Survey Feedback Week 1 Feedback Week 2 Feedback Week 3 Feedback Week 4 Forum Projects Program Info Themes Poster Final Papers

Below are some readings that can provide some background for some of the lectures and/or that you can read after the lecturers to pursue some ideas further. These readings are not required. I will be updating this list fairly frequently. --Dpf 19:15, 26 June 2006 (MDT)

General Background

James Crutchfield, What Lies between Order and Chaos?, in Art and Complexity, J. Casti, editor, Oxford University Press (2002). An interesting, non-technical essay discussing how new patterns are discovered, and how complexity arises from the interplay between order and chaos. This is an excellent introduction to the notions of complexity and emergence, and history of one strand of the study of complex systems.

J.B. Rosser, On the Complexities of Complex Economic Dynamics. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 13:169-192. 1999. I've only read about half of this. It strikes me as a thorough, even-handed review of the applications of "complexity theory" to economics. Presents good spectrum of views, from those who think complexity is mostly hype, to those who believe it has contributed significant new understandings. Contains around 125 references. pdf format, for AEA members.

Cosma Shalizi, Methods and Techniques of Complex Systems Science: An Overview. Chapter 1 (pp. 33--114) in Thomas S. Deisboeck and J. Yasha Kresh (eds.), Complex Systems Science in Biomedicine (New York: Springer, 2006.) This is an excellent, thorough review of the "field" -- to the extent that there is such a thing -- of complex systems. Covers many tools: statistical learning and model selection; time series analysis; cellular automata; agent-based models; the evaluation of complex-systems models; information theory; and ways of measuring complexity. Contains over 250 references. Also available here.

---

Readings Associated with Particular Lecturers

Andreas Wagner

Genome-scale Biological Networks. These are the slides that Andreas will use for his lectures. We will make hard copies available at the CSSS.

Cosma Shalizi

M. E. J. Newman, Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf's law, Contemporary Physics 46, 323-351 (2005). An excellent paper. Good background for Cosma's lecture on power laws.

Herb Gintis

Herbert Gintis, A Framework for the Unification of the Behavioral Sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, forthcoming 2006. Parts of Herb's lectures will be based on this paper.