Excerpt

These proceedings illustrate and support the observation that many of the most important and challenging activities at the forefront of research range broadly across the conventional disciplines and that, viewed as a whole, such topics represent emerging syntheses in science that may be recognized eventually as new disciplines. Our informal discussions, which have been taped but not summarized in the proceedings, have examined the basis for our concern that these syntheses are frequently poorly defined and nurtured and that new academic options, including the Institute described here, are urgently needed to further define and expedite research in these fields. We have asked some more detailed questions? for example, how do we initially choose staff? How should we rank the emerging syntheses in defining initial programs? What form of governance is desirable during the formative years? And how must it be modified with time and growth?

Our discussions have produced agreement that a number of barriers impede the recognition, support, and pursuit of research at the boundaries between disciplines and that the innovations proposed by the Santa Fe Institute should help lower these barriers. We have agreed that our first priority in organizing the permanent Institute must be on recruiting first-rate people. A major part of the permanent staff and the students must possess the breadth of interest necessary to pursue research on a large number of highly complex and interactive systems, which can be properly studied only in an interdisciplinary environment. A ranking of themes will occur naturally as such people are recruited. We have further agreed that education, largely centered on research on these themes, must be our major concern.

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