This title is the result of a one-week workshop sponsored by the Swedish research agency, FRN, on the interface between complexity and art. Among others, it includes discussions on whether "good" art is "complex" art, how artists see the term "complex", and what poets try to convey in word about complex behavior in nature.

Tools to make hard problems easier to solve. In this book, Sanjoy Mahajan shows us that the way to master complexity is through insight rather than precision. Precision can overwhelm us with information, whereas insight connects seemingly disparate pieces of information into a simple picture. Unlike computers, humans depend on insight. Based on the author's fifteen years of teaching at MIT, Cambridge University, and Olin College, The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering shows us how to build insight and find understanding, giving readers tools to help them solve any problem in science and engineering. To master complexity, we can organize it or discard it. The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering first teaches the tools for organizing complexity, then distinguishes the two paths for discarding complexity: with and without loss of information. Questions and problems throughout the text help readers master and apply these groups of tools. Armed with this three-part toolchest, and without complicated mathematics, readers can estimate the flight range of birds and planes and the strength of chemical bonds, understand the physics of pianos and xylophones, and explain why skies are blue and sunsets are red. The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering will appear in print and online under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Share Alike license.

How ideas in complexity can be used to develop more effective public policy Complexity science—made possible by modern analytical and computational advances—is changing the way we think about social systems and social theory. Unfortunately, economists' policy models have not kept up and are stuck in either a market fundamentalist or government control narrative. While these standard narratives are useful in some cases, they are damaging in others, directing thinking away from creative, innovative policy solutions. Complexity and the Art of Public Policy outlines a new, more flexible policy narrative, which envisions society as a complex evolving system that is uncontrollable but can be influenced. David Colander and Roland Kupers describe how economists and society became locked into the current policy framework, and lay out fresh alternatives for framing policy questions. Offering original solutions to stubborn problems, the complexity narrative builds on broader philosophical traditions, such as those in the work of John Stuart Mill, to suggest initiatives that the authors call "activist laissez-faire" policies. Colander and Kupers develop innovative bottom-up solutions that, through new institutional structures such as for-benefit corporations, channel individuals’ social instincts into solving societal problems, making profits a tool for change rather than a goal. They argue that a central role for government in this complexity framework is to foster an ecostructure within which diverse forms of social entrepreneurship can emerge and blossom.

Chaos and complexity are the new buzz words in both science and contemporary society. The ideas they represent have enormous implications for the way we understand and engage with the world. Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences introduces students to the central ideas which surround the chaos/complexity theories. It discusses key concepts before using them as a way of investigating the nature of social research. By applying them to such familiar topics as urban studies, education and health, David Byrne allows readers new to the subject to appreciate the contribution which complexity theory can make to social research and to illuminating the crucial social issues of our day.

In this compilation, the authors begin with a description of fractal geometry, its property of self-similarity, and how its processes of bifurcation can appear in the arts and architecture. These fractal features are common in different cultures and in different architectural styles. Next, the role of algebraic curves in painting, sculpture, and architecture is discussed. These shapes acted as sources of inspiration for artistic themes in many of the geometrical forms of Modern Art. Today, these beautiful shapes can be easily constructed by computers. The authors discuss an art world devoted to the entanglement phenomenon through modifying the perception of space, approaching new horizons educational fields. An investigation of the function and characteristics of fog in various paintings by famous artists of different art movements (in which the presence of fog significantly affects the visual experience) is provided. Following this, the authors describe where fractality appears in architecture and in urban organization, opening new opportunities in virtual architecture and hyperarchitecture. An additional paper presents a study on complexity in architecture. Complexity is the property of a real world system that is manifested in the inability of any one formalism being adequate to capture all of its properties. Continuing, the authors present a study shows that germs of fractals exist in old Indian literature, e.g., fractal architecture in Indian temples and fractal weapons, with the goal of collecting a few examples from old Indian history and presenting their fractal aspects. A paper is presented including some examples of industrial design objects analysed using complexity and fractal geometry. Complex and fractal components appeared in the industrial design after the development of materials, for example, the introduction of float glass. Afterwards, this book aims to show how and where the concept of time can be applied in architecture, maintaining that time is a parameter which architects seldom consider in their projects. The authors go on to illustrate some properties using Markov matrices, open symbolic dynamic nets, and fields on Julia sets, finding find both symmetrical and spiral patterns on local regions of Julia sets, and discontinuous series in the dynamics of some region that are recordable in the neurophysiology of intermittent consciousness. Synchronization can also be called self-similarity, in induced noncommutative geometry. In the next paper, new Koch curves are generated by dividing the initiator into unequal parts. With the increase in size of the set of Koch curves also comes a need for classification. Superior iterations in the study of Julia sets for rational maps are introduced, showing how new Sierpinski curve Julia sets are effectively different from those obtained by other means. Production rules to draw the new Hilbert curves are discussed, as well as production rules to draw the conventional Hilbert Curve. Later, a paper on Mandelbrot and Julia sets rendered in 3 dimensions is presented. In this paper, new Julia sets have been generated for zn+c, n 4 in superior orbit, and modelled in 3 dimensions. The authors examine the Gingko leaf, commonly referred to as a living fossil, that has been declared as tree of the millennium. This chapter aims to show that there are many ways to generate Gingko leaf. In conclusion, techniques to generate Sierpinski Gasket and Sierpinski Carpet as 3- variable and as 4-variable fractals respectively using superior iterates for contractive operators are described.

Kagan starts his analysis pointing at the Western development model and the modern worldview that lie at the heart of unsustainability. He characterizes the modern worldview as based in the classical scientific method and as atomistic, materialistic, individualistic and Eurocentric. Kagan's assumption is that in order to change our actual culture of unsustainability in a sustainable one, we will have to look for an alternative worldview and go beyond utilitarian rationality that is so very common in our contemporary cultures and in most analyses of sustainability. We will have to engage ourselves in a really fundamental rethinking of our culture and our ways of thinking, knowing and seeing ourselves and the world. With an overview of ecological art over the past 40 years and a discussion of art and social change, the book assesses the potential role of art in a much needed transformation process. Review in: International journal of cutural policy.19(2013)1(141-143).

In the new knowledge economy, traditional modes of thinking are no longer effective. Compartmentalizing problems and solutions and assuming everything can be solved with the right formula can no longer keep pace with the radical changes occurring daily in the modern business world. It’s Not Complicated offers a paradigm shift for business professionals looking for simplified solutions to complex problems. In his straightforward and highly engaging style, Rick Nason introduces the principles of “complexity thinking” which empower managers to understand, correlate, and explain a diverse range of business phenomena. For example, why some new products go viral while others remain unnoticed, how office cliques develop despite collaborative work policies and spaces, how economic bubbles form, and how an unknown retiree foiled one of the most carefully planned product launches ever with a single letter to the editor of his local newspaper. Rather than consider complicated and complex as interchangeable terms, Rick Nason explains what complexity is, how it arises, and the errors in solving complex situations with complicated thinking. It’s Not Complicated provides managers with fresh, counterintuitive, and actionable models for dealing with challenging business problems.