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Seminal Papers in Complexity

Posted by Merle Lefkoff on Jun 16, 2007; 7:43pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Seminal-Papers-in-Complexity-tp524047p524053.html

Owen Densmore wrote:

> Several of us have been attending the SFI Summer School this year.  
> One thing that has stood out for me is that there are very few  
> appropriate texts on the detailed, seminal ideas within complexity.  
> Either the books are "popular" or they are technical/formal enough,  
> but without broad view of complexity itself.  Indeed, they may be  
> *too* advanced in their speciality for the broad use complexity  
> wishes to make.
>
> One example today was the intersection of computational theory and  
> statistical mechanics given by Cris Moore:
> A Tale of Two Cultures: Phase Transitions in
> Physics and Computer Science
> Here are the slides: http://www.santafe.edu/~moore/Oxford.pdf
> You'd be unlikely to find a book bridging algorithms, computational  
> complexity, and statistical mechanics.
>
> This leads me to believe that seminal papers are likely to be a good  
> solution for bridging the various cultures, hopefully with some that  
> *do* bridge gaps between specialties.
>
> Sooo -- gentle reader -- this brings me to a request: I'd like to  
> start a collection of seminal papers who's goal is to bridge the gap  
> between popular books and over-specialized texts, which are formal  
> enough to be useful for multi-discipline complexity work.  This may  
> be daft, but I think not.
>
> As an example, I'd say Shannon's 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of  
> Communication would be good.
>
>      -- Owen
>
>
>
> ============================================================
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> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
>  
Owen,

I took advantage of the CNLS printer to print LOTS of articles about
complexity that seemed to do more than just gestate in utero (let's all
feminize seminal).  Before I toss them all, I will pass on a few
suggestions for the list.  Do you want the titles annotated?

-Merle-