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Prologue:

"Life at the Edge of Chaos”

The Santa Fe Institute was housed in a series of buildings on Canyon Road which had formerly been a convent, and the Institute’s seminars were held in a roo at the podiu down on hi his lecture

Malcolure at the Institute He had been one of the early pioneers in chaos theory, but his pro a trip to Costa Rica; Malcolm had, in fact, been reported dead in several newscasts “I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country,” he later said, “but it turned out I was only slightly dead The surgeons have done wonders, as they will be the first to tell you So now I aht say”

Dressed entirely in black, leaning on a cane, Malcolave the impression of severity He was knoithin the Institute for his unconventional analysis, and his tendency to pessie of Chaos,” was typical of his thinking In it, Malcolm presented his analysis of chaos theory as it applied to evolution

He could not have wished for a eable audience The Santa Fe Institute had been forroup of scientists interested in the implications of chaos theory The scientists cay, computer science What they had in common was a belief that the co order which had previously eluded science, and which would be revealed by chaos theory, non as complexity theory In the words of one, complexity theory was “the science of the twenty-first century”

The Institute had explored the behavior of a great variety of complex systems—corporations in the marketplace, neurons in the huroup behavior of ratory birds—systems so complex that it had not been possible to study them before the advent of the co

It did not take long before the scientists began to notice that complex systems showed certain common behaviors They started to think of these behaviors as characteristic of all complex systems They realized that these behaviors could not be explained by analyzing the components of the systems The ti the watch apart to see hoorked—didn’t get you anywhere with co behavior seemed to arise from the spontaneous interaction of the components The behavior wasn’t planned or directed; it just happened Such behavior was therefore called “self-organizing”

“Of the self-organizing behaviors,” Ian Malcolm said, “two are of particular interest to the study of evolution One is adaptation We see it everywhere Corporations adapt to the nal traffic, the immune system adapts to infection, animals adapt to their food supply We have come to think that the ability to adapt is characteristic of complex systems—and may be one reason why evolution seeanisms”

He shifted at the podiuht onto his cane “But even more important,” he said, “is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the ie Complex systee of chaos’ We ih innovation to keep a living syste into anarchy It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war Finding the balance pointsyste over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the systeid, frozen, totalitarian Both conditions lead to extinction Too e of chaos can complex systems flourish”

He paused “And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable result of one or the other strategy—too e, or too little”

In the audience, heads were nodding This was fa to most of the researchers present Indeed, the concept of the edge of chaos was very nearly dogma at the Santa Fe Institute

“Unfortunately,” Malcolap between this theoretical construct and the fact of extinction is vast We have no way to know if our thinking is correct The fossil record can tell us that an animal became extinct at a certain time, but not why Computer simulations are of lianised to admit that extinction—untestable, unsuited for experiment—may not be a scientific subject at all And this may explain why the subject has been eious and political controversy I would readro’s number, or Planck’s constant, or the functions of the pancreas But about extinction, there has been perpetual controversy for two hundred years And I wonder how it is to be solved if—Yes? What is it?”

At the back of the roo impatiently Malcolm frowned, visibly annoyed The tradition at the Institute was that questions were held until the presentation ended; it was poor form to interrupt a speaker “You had a question?” Malcolm asked

Fro man in his early thirties stood “Actually,” the man said, “an observation”

The speaker was dark and thin, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, precise in his ist fro the summer at the Institute Malcolm had never spoken to hireed to be the best paleobiologist of his generation, perhaps the best in the world Buthiant