Complexity Theory

Auyang, Sunny Y. Foundations of Complex-System Theories: In Economics, Evolutionary Biology, and Statistical Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Badii, R., A. Politi. Complexity: Hierarchical Structures and Scaling in Physics. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Bak, P. How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Popular exposition of the theory of self-organising criticality developed by the author and his collaborators. Provides a simple paradigm for how some forms of complexity develop and organize themselves in nature.

Casti, John L., Anders Karlqvist. eds. Complexity, Language, and Life: Mathematical Approaches. Springer-Verlag New York, 1986.

Chaisson, Eric J., Lola Judith Chaisson. Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature. Harvard University Press, 2000.

Cilliers, Paul. Complexity & Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. London: Routledge, 1998.
A philosophical interpretation of complexity theory that places its basic theory in the camp of postmodernism, while criticizing a purely computational approach in complexity.

Cowan, George A., David Pines, David Meltzer. eds. Complexity: Metaphors, Models and Reality. Cambridge,MA: Perseus Books, 1994.
Includes a wealth of articles, including tape-recorded discussions, from leading figures in the emerging paradigm of complexity theory, including Philip Andersen, Gell-Mann, Stuart Kauffman, John Holland, Peter Shuster.

Davies, Paul. The Cosmic Blueprint. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
Joins the issue of "nature as self-organizing."

Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking Press, 1987.

Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature. Cambridge, UK ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Guzwiller, M. C. Chaos in Classical and Quantum Mechanics. New York: Springer, 1990.

Kampis, George. Self-Modifying Systems in Biology and Cognitive Science: A New Framework for Dynamics, Information and Complexity. Elsevier Science, 1991.

Kauffman, Stuart. Origins of Order. Oxford: Oxford Univ Press, 1993.

Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
A broader exposition of the ideas in Kaufman 1993.

Kauffman, Stuart. Investigations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
A new attempt to argue for the idea of a fourth law of thermodynamics that systematically drives simple systems into complexification.

Kellert, Stephen H. In the Wake of Chaos: Unpredictable Order in Dynamical Systems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Discusses the development and application of "chaos theory" (complexity theory).

Laszlo, Ervin. The Systems View of the World: A Holistic Vision for Our Time. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1996.

Lewin, Roger. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Mandelbrot, B. The Fractal Geometry of Nature. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982.

Benoit Mandelbrot's classic work that sparked off the subject of Fractal.

Prigogine, Ilya, Isabelle Steugers. Order Out of Chaos. London: Heinemann, 1984.
Arrow of time and the irreversibility of processes as constituting the sense of macroscopic reality.

Ruelle, David. Chaos and Chance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Stewart, Ian. Does God Play Dice?: The Mathematics of Chaos. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.

Stewart, Ian, Jake Cohen. Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Voros, A., M. J. Giannoni, J. Zinn-Justin. Chaos and Quantum Physics. Elsevier Science Publishers, 1991.

Waldrop, M. Mitchell. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.