Patterns in the Sand

In the FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE series, an introduction to understanding biological systems through the use of complexity and chaos theories. It discusses how these theories can assist computers to generate recognisable patterns of natural phenomena and uses examples from everyday life to demonstrate this.

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Until recently, science has made progress by breaking large systems down into smaller and simpler parts, studying and explaining how these parts operate and then putting them back together again. Now, there is a new science -- complexity -- that asks how the world is put together. For example, knowing how a single neuron works does not explain how the brain works because of all the interactions of millions of individual neurons. Patterns in the Sand discusses this new scientific paradigm that treats life as a natural computation, and shows how this approach translates into ways of dealing with complexity in real life. It shows, for example, how key ideas, such as chaos, criticality and emergent phenomena, help us to understand how ants build their nests, how the brain works and why accidents happen. The titles in the series Frontiers of Science describe current research and developments in selected topics. The series is edited by Professor Paul Davies.