We live in a complex world — one that is increasingly connected, evolving, technological, volatile, and potentially poised for catastrophe. And yet we continue to treat the world as if it were simple. Our dominant frameworks are still linear, unchanging, and disconnected, assuming Earth’s resources are infinitely exploitable. Complexity science offers a paradigm-shifting approach.

To SFI External Professor Han van der Maas, psychology is the most fascinating science of all. It’s also one he sees as facing multiple crises — crises of theory, replication, and measurement.

The Santa Fe Institute is gifting a set of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science books to each recipient of the Complex System Society’s upcoming Emerging Awards. The three winners will be announced during the next Conference on Complex Systems in Exeter, UK, in September.

When Claude Shannon wrote “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” in 1948, he was known as a mathematician and an electrical engineer. From this extraordinarily influential paper — cited more than 155,000 times — he would come to be called the “father of information theory.” Today, we see in him the hallmarks of an early complexity scientist.

The more we learn about the past, the more we come to understand that ancient societies share some striking similarities to our own. From the first waves of migration out of Africa to the Ancestral Pueblo, the peoples of the past created art, migrated to new lands, fought wars, raised families, and exploited natural resources for housing, food, and tools—just like we do.