Reading list on self-organization.

June 3, 2015 11:13 AM

I read a lot of books and papers about self-organization in physics, computer science, statistics, AI, evolutionary and systems biology, social networks, genetic networks, Internet networks, linguistic networks, formal computational networks and such. I'd like to read more.

I've read a lot of Kauffman, Prigogine, Bergson, Turing's morphogenesis work, the von Neumann work on cellular automata, Mandelbrot, Strogatz, Barabasi, Feigenbaum, May, Ashby, Weiner, Gell-Mann, Mitchell, Newman, Shalizi, Turchin, Watts, etc etc. I've read a lot of their papers, some of their books, but I don't have a complete knowledge of any of their writings.

Recommend me things, maybe new authors or stuff by those authors that's lesser known. I don't like Bak or Wolfram's work, because of their general lack of humility. No popularizations, please.

posted by curuinor to Science & Nature (1 answer total)

Best answer: Well, heck, that's a pretty good list. Coming from the systems perspective, I might add John Holland (genetic algorithms), Chris Langton (artificial life, "edge of chaos") and Maturana/Varela (autopoesis). I also liked Ramon Margalef's work on applying information theory in ecology. Speaking of ecology, Holling's concept of Panarchy. And if Mitchell <> Melanie Mitchell, then her.
posted by sapere aude at 4:47 PM on June 3, 2015 [1 favorite]