Complexity

M. Mitchell Waldrop tells the story of the Santa Fe Institute, a think tank in a rented convent in Santa Fe, where Nobel laureates including Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow worked with graduate students, mathematicians and computer scientists from Los Alamos to create a new science of complexity. The group shared an impatience with the linear, reductionist thinking that had dominated science since Newton. Their questions ranged from how a soup of simple molecules became the first living cell to why ancient ecosystems often stayed stable for millions of years and then vanished, and why economies can behave in ways economists cannot explain. Waldrop's account centers on the scientists themselves as the new field takes shape.

Bill Gurley has called it one of the most influential books he has read.