Complexity
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss complexity and how it can help us understand the world around us. When living beings come together and act in a group, they do so in complicated and unpredictable ways: societies often behave very differently from the individuals within them. Complexity was a phenomenon little understood a generation ago, but research into complex systems now has important applications in many different fields, from biology to political science. Today it is being used to explain how birds flock, to predict traffic flow in cities and to study the spread of diseases.
With:
Ian Stewart
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick
Jeff Johnson
Professor of Complexity Science and Design at the Open University
Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly
Director of the Complexity Research Group at the London School of Economics.
Producer: Thomas Morris.
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LINKS AND FURTHER READING
Ian Stewart at the University of Warwick
Eve Mitleton-Kelly at the London School of Economics
Centre for Complexity and Design - The Open University
Institute for Complex Systems Simulation - University of Southampton
Centre for Complexity Science - University of Warwick
Complex Systems Digital Campus
READING LIST:
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks (Perseus Books, 2003)
Mark Buchanan, Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks (W. W. Norton & Company, 2003)
Mark Earls, Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature (John Wiley & Sons, 2009)
Roger Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
Melanie Mitchell, Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (MIT Press, 1996)
Steven Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (Hyperion, 2003)
Duncan Watts, Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness (Princeton University Press, 2003)
Credits
| Role | Contributor |
|---|---|
| Presenter | Melvyn Bragg |
| Interviewed Guest | Ian Stewart |
| Interviewed Guest | Jeff Johnson |
| Interviewed Guest | Eve Mitleton-Kelly |
| Producer | Thomas Morris |
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