Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe (New Mexico, United States) and dedicated to the study of complex systems.
History
The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by scientists George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky. All but Pines and Gell-Mann were scientists with Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Current research at the Institute focuses on systems commonly described as complex adaptive systems, including physical, evolutionary, and social systems. Recent research has included studies of the emergence of metabolic networks in early life, metabolic and ecological scaling laws, the evolutionary diversity of HIV strains, the interactions and conflicts of primate social groups, the order book of stock markets, and the emergence of inequality in prehistoric human groups.
The Institute also studies foundational topics in the physics and mathematics of complex systems, using tools from related disciplines such as information theory, combinatorics, computational complexity theory and condensed matter physics. Recent research in this area has included studies of phase transitions in NP-hard problems.
Some of the Institute's other accomplishments are:
- SFI's complexity research led to efforts to create artificial life modeling real organisms and ecosystems in the 1980s and 1990s.
- Foundational contributions to the complexity economics school of thought.
- SFI is coordinating the "Evolution of Human Languages" project, an attempt to trace all human language to a common root (cf. Proto-World).[1][2]
Resident faculty
- Tanmoy Bhattacharya
- Sam Bowles
- George Cowan
- Jennifer A. Dunne
- Douglas Erwin
- J. Doyne Farmer
- Jessica Flack
- Murray Gell-Mann
- David Krakauer
- Fabrizio Lillo
- Cormac McCarthy
- John H. Miller
- Cristopher Moore
- Jeremy Sabloff
- Paula Sabloff
- D. Eric Smith
- Geoffrey West
- Jon Wilkins
- Chris Wood
- Libby Wood
Other associated faculty
- Phil Anderson
- W. Brian Arthur
- Per Bak
- Eric Beinhocker
- Carl Bergstrom
- James H. Brown
- John L. Casti[3]
- Jim Crutchfield
- Morten Christiansen
- Brian J. Enquist
- Walter Fontana
- Stephanie Forrest
- John Geanakoplos
- Brian Goodwin
- Alfred Hubler
- John H. Holland
- Stuart Kauffman
- David A. Lane
- Christopher Langton
- Simon Levin
- Robert May
- Michael J. Mauboussin
- Melanie Mitchell
- Harold Morowitz
- Mark Newman
- Alan Perelson
- Woody Powell
- Ricard V. Solé
- George Starostin
- Chuck Stevens
- Duncan Watts
- David B. Weinberger
- Douglas R. White
Influence
SFI's original mission was to disseminate the notion of a separate interdisciplinary research area, complexity theory referred to at SFI as "complexity science". Subsequent to the Institute's founding, a number of complexity institutes and departments were begun, including:
- The CCS at Florida Atlantic University[4]
- The CCSR (Center for Complex Systems Research) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign[5]
- The CSCS at the University of Michigan[6]
- The CSC at UC Davis[7]
- The Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University
- The New England Complex Systems Institute
- The Institute Para Limes, a European initiative based in the Netherlands[8]
See also
References
- ^ Evolution of Human Languages
- ^ Linguists seek a time when we spoke as one. USA Today, 20 July 2007
- ^ John L. Casti: Biography
- ^ CCS
- ^ CCSR
- ^ CSCS
- ^ CSC
- ^ Institute Para Limes in Europe, retrieved 01 April 2008.]