Preface: Nietzsche's Wild World Weekly Success This book tells the story of the birth of a new science.You may or may not have heard the name of this emerging science; but through the introduction of this book, everyone should know that it has indeed come.It is complexity science. The complexity here is not only understood from the literal meaning, it actually contains two characteristics of complexity and organizational structure.The objects of complex scientific research range from the life phenomenon presented by a cell, the structure of the brain to the fluctuation of the stock market and the rise and fall of the regime.These systems all have something in common, that is, behind their erratic activities, there is some kind of elusive order.Complexity science is trying to understand, master, and control the principles of these complex system activities.

All in line with physics? At first glance, this seems to be no different from traditional science. Isn’t the development of Western science in the past three hundred years aimed at investigating the ultimate principles behind everything in the world?From Newton, Einstein to Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger, all of them are trying to describe nature with clear and concise mathematical equations.Simplicity and authenticity have become another interpretation of the beauty of science.The first task in the face of complex systems is to decompose them into simple constituent molecules, and then study the properties of each constituent molecule and explore their interaction with each other.The nature of complex systems is naturally within our grasp.

If you know E. coli, you know elephants, a lesson that molecular biologists are proud to learn from physics.The development of science is to explore endlessly from molecules, atoms, electrons to quarks.The study of elementary particles is regarded as the jewel in the crown of science, chemistry is an impure science, and biology is just a kind of stamp collecting activity (this is Rutherford's words).The level of scientific research is orderly from top to bottom, and every discipline has to work hard to keep pace with physics! This trend of scientific reduction theory has dominated the development of science in the past century, and has also achieved unprecedented achievements.New knowledge is accumulated at an explosive rate.The accelerator is getting bigger and bigger, and the terminal for interpreting the blueprint of human genes is about to emerge.On the one hand, the scientific community is filled with joy: we have almost pushed the operation of human reason to the extreme!But on the other hand, some people are beginning to feel confused: Is there a limit to this endless reduction?Even if the last theory of everything is found, can it tell us why people live or why cells have life?

It was the philosophers of science who were the first to feel uncomfortable with the reduction theory of science.Philosophers ask with their usual cautious and skeptical attitude: Can the whole be mastered after knowing the properties of the parts?Karl R. Popper once questioned whether a physicist who is deaf and has never heard music can write all of Beethoven's Symphony?Or even pieces that he never wrote due to circumstances such as Beethoven eating lamb chops instead of chicken?Of course, this argument is exaggerated by philosophers, but scientists have long noticed that there are some discontinuous correspondences between parts and wholes?For example, after thoroughly understanding the molecular structure of water (two hydrogen atoms plus one oxygen atom), it is still difficult for us to imagine why when hundreds of trillions of water molecules gather together, it will bring us that kind of Damp and flowing feeling?

So here's the problem: When many small constituent molecules interact with each other, a new, unique property emerges from the whole.This emergent feature makes reduction theory go to the end of the alley!At the same time, this also ignited the opportunity for the development of complex science. The Temple of Complex Science Research If we want to further explore the differences between this emerging science and traditional science, maybe we can look at it this way: There are three different types of systems in the physical world, the first is nothing too interesting, like steady state or cyclical system.This is the object of many studies in classical physics, Newton's celestial mechanics being an example.The second is a completely messy collection of many molecules, such as a system such as gas molecules.Such systems attracted the rest of the classical physicists.The third type of system hovers between order and chaos, has structure but is hard to predict, and it flows with endless patterns.Ecosystems, economics, politics, and even psychology all feature this type of system.How to capture the images of life shown by these systems wandering on the edge of chaos is exactly the challenge that complex science must face.

Complexity This book focuses on the Santa Fe Research Institute in the United States, which was established less than ten years ago but is committed to complex science research.Through the description of several founders of the Santa Fe Institute, the author presents to us their curiosity, suspicion, confusion, interaction and interrogation in the process of scientific exploration; The future network of complex science.We can not only see from the book, but also feel the inner fanaticism and vitality of this small group of scientists.What they want to explore is the characteristics highlighted by the interaction between various components in a complex system; and the sharp weapon they hold is precisely the in-depth interaction between different disciplines.The Santa Fe Research Institute deliberately arranged dialogues among scholars in economics, physics, biology, computer science, archaeology, politics, and anthropology, trying to find some commonalities among various complex systems.There is no precedent for such a scientific development model, and its results are unpredictable.These were a sudden influx of scientific explorers at the end of the twentieth century who bet on the future!

If we compare the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, established in the 1930s and stationed by Einstein, to Plato's sky-genius scientists, who immerse themselves in the pure theoretical world of physics and mathematics, seeking the ultimate answer to the construction of the universe; Then, what the Santa Fe Institute in the 1980s presented was a world of Nietzsche’s fanaticism and vitality, freed from the shackles of some ideas in the inherent academic disciplines, allowing science to soar unrestrainedly in the sky like an eagle and look down on the earth. Explore that unknown new world!

Reinterpret nature again! Finally, I would like to raise a question for readers to think about.In the formation of the Santa Fe School, human factors undoubtedly played an extremely important role.Here I give two examples.One is Gellman, one of the founders of the Santa Fe Institute. He is not only the founder of quark theory and a Nobel Prize winner in physics, but also a linguist, proficient in thirteen languages; he also studies psychology, human science, archaeology, and the preservation of cultures and ecosystems.In addition to Santa Fe, Gelman also has a major work dedicated to preserving the Amazon rainforest.The other is also the core figure of the Santa Fe Institute, Professor Kaufman.Kaufman studied philosophy in college and aspired to be a playwright.Then I went to Oxford University to study psychology and philosophy, but felt that it was not solid enough, so I went back to the University of California, San Francisco to study medicine.But he never took medicine seriously. In his third year of medicine, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to follow some computer masters and play online games.

Think about it, under our educational system, how many possibilities are there to cultivate generalists like Gellman or Kaufman who can lead the development of science in the next century? This book conveys a clear message to us who are looking forward to the coming of the 21st century: Science must reinterpret nature!We not only need to understand the grammar that makes up a natural language, but also the meaning that this natural language presents!This is at the heart of the claims of complex science; we must read, think, refute, and argue about its implications, but never ignore its existence!

(The author of this article is a researcher of Rongzong Medical Research Department and a professor of Yangming Medical College)