News + Events

Exploring the limits of scientific understanding is the query that will drive a three-day workshop at SFI, which itself aims to understand how well scientific and mathematical reasoning can comprehend complex systems.

Nick Lane presented a lecture on energy and Matter at the Origin of Life at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on November 7. Watch his talk here.

What do you lose by moving to the suburbs? A lot, according to an SFI working group examining human settlements over thousands of years.

On Tuesday, October 17, Manfred Laubichler led a panel discussion on the unprecedented ways in which human activity has shaped the planet. Watch the panel discussion here.

The Santa Fe Institute invites space enthusiasts of all ages and backgrounds to engage with the pressing problems of today by imagining the challenges of tomorrow in a series of city-wide events from October 13 through October 17.

In a two-part lecture series in Santa Fe on September 25-26, economist John Geanakoplos explored why it is that out of all economic variables, debt causes the most trouble. Watch part one of his talk here and part two here.

The body includes the brain — so what role does it play in intelligence? An SFI working group meets to explore morphological computation and a theory of embodied intelligence.

On September 12, 2017, SFI and Thornburg Investment Management co-hosted a panel discussion to explore the possibilities for advancing our understanding of economics through the ideas and tools of complexity science. Watch the talk here.

Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West presented the origin of scaling laws and their compelling implications for explaining everything from the lifecycles of companies, to a grand unified theory of sustainability on August 29, 2017.  Watch his talk here.  

Colleagues, friends, and family gather to remember the life and work of Harold Morowitz, and to keep moving his ideas forward. 

SFI Maya Working Group meets for fifth time to produce a second book.

A June working group explored ways to model interactions between organisms and a public good, where both can diffuse in space.

Farley Ziegler, Tim Jenison, and SFI Professor Jessica Flack presented an SFI Community Lecture on painting and optics in the 17th Century and a screening of Tim's Vermeer at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on August 1.

The Santa Fe Institute is launching an InterPlanetary Project — the first project of its kind to combine celebration with experimentation, and conversation with analysis.

Actors presented select scenes from Marin Gazzaniga’s play exploring deeply held assumptions about religion and belief at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on May 9.

Michael Kearns presented an SFI Community Lecture on machine learning and social norms at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on April 4. Watch his talk here.

An SFI working group explores the interactions between pre-industrial humans and other species, and what those interactions might tell us about modern society.

Human settlements sprawl according to common factors, and modern cities show similar patterns to ancient ones, but hunter-gatherer encampments look much different. An SFI working group is trying to figure out why.

Some 30 researchers gather at SFI this week to discover how social networks influence wealth inequality.

During a January 24 talk in Santa Fe, neurobiologist Christof Koch presented a theory about which brains can experience consciousness and which cannot. Watch his talk here.