Is there a limit to scientific understanding?
In an editorial for The Atlantic, former SFI science board member Martin Rees writes about limits to understanding — a major SFI research theme.
The latest news and events at the Santa Fe Institute
In an editorial for The Atlantic, former SFI science board member Martin Rees writes about limits to understanding — a major SFI research theme.
Liberalism, acording to Professor Sam Bowles, has lost sight of the ends that once animated it. Read his editorial in The Boston Globe.
Van Savage, an external professor, makes a case for including uncertainty estimates in the predictive models that run our smartphone apps.
Dan Larremore and Aaron Clauset tackle prediction in our final essay in the CSMonitor's complexity series. From horseracing to earthquakes, they explain why we have so much trouble predicting seemingly simple systems, and how other very complex systems show predictable patterns at the macro scale.
To understand why fewer and fewer firms are going public, The Economist turns to a new paper by Michael Mauboussin, an SFI trustee.
External Professor Seth Blumsack describes how complexity science can prevent future large scale power outages from occuring.
"The evolution of human intelligence has always been about overcoming the constraints of soft organic matter," writes SFI president David Krakauer in WIRED UK
What makes the Santa Fe Institute so "wildly creative and highly effective?" In this Harvard Business Review article, David Krakauer and Robert Wolcott distill six elements of SFI culture that could transfer to any organization.
Molly Jahn asks how the methods of complexity science might offer new perspectives on our food system, part of our continuing series in the CS Monitor.
In the CS Monitor, SFI's Paula Sabloff explores the differences between alliances of equals and alliances that begin with a gift, in politics and human history.
External Professor John Miller writes of suicidal army ants and the flash crash in his essay “What happens when the systems we rely on go haywire,” part of SFI’s essay series with the CS Monitor.
Like ecosystems, financial markets are complex evolving systems from which unexpected bubbles, crashes, and other surprising behaviors can emerge. Building resilient financial systems may require policymakers to take cues from biology.
SFI's Christa Brelsford asks how we can begin to think about the tangled web of water supply and demand in an age of scarcity, part of our essay series with the CS Monitor.
In social systems, incentives can work in perverse ways. SFI's Sam Bowles tells us how in his CS Monitor essay.
Human interaction is a march toward change and turmoil – not stability, explains SFI's Simon DeDeo in this essay for the CS Monitor.
There’s order in the chaos of presidential primaries, but is there wisdom? John Miller breaks it down in this essay for the CS Monitor.
In the CS Monitor, SFI's Mirta Galesic explores how violent extremism emerges from complex social systems.
Engineered societies have long been a curiosity of pundits and poets. Jessica Flack and Manfred Laubichler explore the possibilities in an age of big science and bigger data.
In SFI's complexity science in the CS Monitor, Jennifer Dunne and Marcus Hamilton describe two important ways modern humans distinguish themselves.
We use ‘Big Computing’ to analyze climate, healthcare, and even traffic. Doyne Farmer and Rob Axtell ask 'why not the economy?' in this essay for the CS Monitor.