Thursday, September 02nd, 2010

Inquiry: Melanie Mitchell: COMPLEXITY: A GUIDED TOUR

What does a colony of army ants, our brains, the economies of large countries and the World Wide Web all have in common? They are all examples of “complex systems” and the study of complexity may hold the key to understanding how our thoughts occur, how genes work, or how we can teach machines to be more human. Tonight on Inquiry, our guest is MELANIE MITCHELL, Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Professor Mitchell has spent her life studying and modeling complex systems and her new book COMPLEXITY: A GUIDED TOUR, is the first overview of this very new science geared for the general public. Tune in tonight and learn why Stuart Kauffman has said “life exists at the edge of chaos.”