Rationale

  1. Foundational Papers in Complexity Science is a project to discern the unity of an evolving inquiry.

  2. After polling members of the extended network of Santa Fe Institute complexity researchers, we selected 89 papers spanning just under a century that chart the formation of the field.

  3. These papers—some classics, others cultish—collectively investigate the principles governing open, out-of-equilibrium systems that are self-organizing or selected, in the natural and cultural world.

  4. The papers are ordered chronologically to establish patterns of influence and an emerging consensus.

  5. Each paper has a unique introduction by a complexity researcher placing its ideas in historical context, and highlighting its perdurable contributions, and the new ideas that it has spawned.

  6. Each paper is annotated by a researcher to underscore points where critical insights are made.

  7. The year 2000 was established as the cut-off year for the Foundational Papers, recognizing that not enough time has elapsed to label subsequent work foundational.

  8. These papers are being made available as a print-only four-volume set. The decision in favor of print is based on the prohibitive cost of licensing these papers as online materials.

  9. A great deal of effort has gone into making these four volumes as beautiful and practical as possible in order to engage the senses and the mind.

  10. Searching for Order in the Complexity of Evolving Worlds

—DAVID C. KRAKAUER AND THE SFI PRESS TEAM

IMAGE: Sir Isaac makes room in the Santa Fe Institute library for all four volumes of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science.

Acknowledgements

The SFI Press is supported by William H. Miller and the Miller Omega Program.

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To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. ­

—Herman Melville
Moby-Dick (1851)

These four volumes are a product of collective intelligence. They have come into existence through the coordinated insights of a global network of complexity scientists. We thank every one of them for their insights and efforts.

We thank our generous Board of Trustees, research foundations, and federal agencies for their support of science, reason, and debate.

We thank our colleagues Kate Joyce,  Tim Taylor, Renée Tursi, Katherine Mast, and Bronwynn Woodsworth for reading, commenting, adding to, and improving on the project.

We dedicate these four volumes to the friends and colleagues we have lost during their making: Phil Anderson, Dan Dennett, Herb Gintis, James Hartle, Erica Jen, Richard Lewontin, Dan Lynch, Robert May, Cormac McCarthy, David Padwa, James Pelkey, William Sick, Chuck Stevens, and Douglas White.

David C. Krakauer
Laura Egley Taylor
Sienna Latham
Zato Hebbert
Ellis Wylie