Comments About Textbooks

Each subject we examine this semester is an enormous subject all its own with entire books, or college courses devoted to it. In some areas you can get an advanced degree studying it. Plus, these higher degrees are spread across the disciplines: math, economics, biology, etc.

Hundreds of books exist dealing with chaos theory, complexity theory, and evolutionary systems, both general and highly technical. We incorporated ideas from many of these books, but none of the books by themselves make a good textbook for this course. We may recommend deeper explorations of what we are studying, but if you buy every book worth reading you will purchase a small library. Not a good idea. So, a few books, described below.

Textbook Information:

There are two course notebooks, and two additional reading texts.

Notebook of Lecture Illustrations - JMU Copy Center. We have a large array of diagrams, charts, tables, quotes, excerpts, etc. that support the lectures, laboratories, and seminars. They are assembled in this notebook.

Notebook of Laboratory Experiments - JMU Copy Center. We run a large number of experiments during the semester, most all computer based models and simulations, including cellular automata, genetic algorithms, fractal generation, the Prisoner's Dilemma, etc. This notebook contains the instructions for exploring these models.

Plus, we have seminars dealing with the next two books. We are very interested in reading works that illustrate how the principles of complex evolutionary systems apply to real world systems, preferrably by authors who are writing from a different perspective than complexity theory. The two books below are excellent examples of the type.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs: 458 pages; Publisher: Vintage Books; ISBN: 067974195X; Reissue edition (December 1992)

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright: 435 pages; Publisher: Vintage Books; ISBN: 0679758941; (January 9, 2001)

Jacobs book examines the principles under which a city operates, or does not operate well; now, a well recognized classic. Wright's book examines whether there has been progress of any measurable kind in human history, and the principles which have controlled and directed that evolution. Or,

the more closely we examine the drift of biological evolution and, especially, the drift of human history, the more there seems to be a point to it all. Because in neither case is *drift* really the right word. Both of these processes have a direction, an arrow. At least, that is the thesis of this book.

His is a fascinating and very controversial thesis, since many people through history have passionately argued there is no direction. But, Evolutionary Systems is about, well, evolutionary systems, so it is appropriate we explore it

We have asked the bookstore to order copies of these for the class, but have also linked them to Amazon.com. Go read the readers' reviews, and order directly from Amazon if you want.