-
Complexity
- A Guided Tour
- Narrated by: Kathleen Godwin
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchel Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
-
-
You won't learn anything you didn't know
- By Dennis E. Alwine on 12-26-20
-
Chaos
- Making a New Science
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the 20th century's third revolution.
-
-
Best AudioBook on Math/Physics yet
- By Ryanman on 03-02-11
By: James Gleick
-
Artificial Intelligence
- A Guide for Thinking Humans
- By: Melanie Mitchell
- Narrated by: Abby Craden, Melanie Mitchell, Tony Wolf
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent - really - are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant methods of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought that led to recent achievements.
-
-
Start understanding AI right here!
- By Chad M. on 01-26-20
By: Melanie Mitchell
-
Systems Thinking and Chaos
- Simple Scientific Analysis on How Chaos and Unpredictability Shape Our World (And How to Find Order in It)
- By: Albert Rutherford
- Narrated by: Russell Newton
- Length: 2 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We can encounter chaos in every system around us - even the smallest and simplest ones. Any system can fall into chaos, which prevents us to accurately predict its behavior. Even a small change in the initial conditions can lead to unexpectedly large-scale consequences. Therefore, we can often enter in panic, blame actors for events they are not responsible for, and our sense of security in the world can generally decrease.
-
-
Head and shoulders above other recent short titles
- By Philo on 06-18-20
-
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Jeff Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
-
-
Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
- By LongerILiveLessIKnow on 11-14-13
-
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- By: Thomas S. Kuhn
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book.
-
-
Great book but a hard listen.
- By Jonathan on 04-09-12
By: Thomas S. Kuhn
-
Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchel Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
-
-
You won't learn anything you didn't know
- By Dennis E. Alwine on 12-26-20
-
Chaos
- Making a New Science
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the 20th century's third revolution.
-
-
Best AudioBook on Math/Physics yet
- By Ryanman on 03-02-11
By: James Gleick
-
Artificial Intelligence
- A Guide for Thinking Humans
- By: Melanie Mitchell
- Narrated by: Abby Craden, Melanie Mitchell, Tony Wolf
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent - really - are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant methods of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought that led to recent achievements.
-
-
Start understanding AI right here!
- By Chad M. on 01-26-20
By: Melanie Mitchell
-
Systems Thinking and Chaos
- Simple Scientific Analysis on How Chaos and Unpredictability Shape Our World (And How to Find Order in It)
- By: Albert Rutherford
- Narrated by: Russell Newton
- Length: 2 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We can encounter chaos in every system around us - even the smallest and simplest ones. Any system can fall into chaos, which prevents us to accurately predict its behavior. Even a small change in the initial conditions can lead to unexpectedly large-scale consequences. Therefore, we can often enter in panic, blame actors for events they are not responsible for, and our sense of security in the world can generally decrease.
-
-
Head and shoulders above other recent short titles
- By Philo on 06-18-20
-
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
- By: Daniel C. Dennett
- Narrated by: Jeff Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.
-
-
Loved it, but some philosophy background needed.
- By LongerILiveLessIKnow on 11-14-13
-
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- By: Thomas S. Kuhn
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book.
-
-
Great book but a hard listen.
- By Jonathan on 04-09-12
By: Thomas S. Kuhn
-
This Way to the Universe
- A Theoretical Physicist's Journey to the Edge of Reality
- By: Michael Dine
- Narrated by: Michael Dine
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Way to the Universe is a celebration of the astounding, ongoing scientific investigations that have revealed the nature of reality at its smallest, at its largest, and at the scale of our daily lives. The enigmas that Professor Michael Dine discusses are like landmarks on a fantastic journey to the edge of the universe. Asked where to find out about the big bang, dark matter, the Higgs boson particle - the long cutting edge of physics right now - Dine had no single book he could recommend. This is his accessible, authoritative, and up-to-date answer.
-
-
I Want More!
- By adam on 02-21-22
By: Michael Dine
-
Sync
- How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
- By: Steven Strogatz
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At once elegant and riveting, Sync tells the story of the dawn of a new science. Steven Strogatz, a leading mathematician in the fields of chaos and complexity theory, explains how enormous systems can synchronize themselves, from the electrons in a superconductor to the pacemaker cells in our hearts. He shows that although these phenomena might seem unrelated on the surface, at a deeper level there is a connection, forged by the unifying power of mathematics.
-
-
Engaging, but maybe better suited for non-audio
- By Ryan on 05-26-12
By: Steven Strogatz
-
The Vital Question
- Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
- By: Nick Lane
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies, and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
-
-
Ouch!
- By Mark on 06-24-16
By: Nick Lane
-
Thinking in Systems
- A Primer
- By: Donella H. Meadows
- Narrated by: Tia Rider Sorensen
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....
-
-
Skip to the Middle
- By John Chambers on 06-20-20
-
The World in 2050
- How to Think About the Future
- By: Hamish McRae
- Narrated by: Gordon Griffin
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What will the world look like in 2050? How will complex forces of change—demography, the environment, finance, technology and ideas about governance—affect our global society? And how, with so many unknowns, should we think about the future? One of Europe’s foremost voices on global trends in economics, business and society, Hamish McRae takes us on an exhilarating journey through the next 30 years. Drawing on decades of research, and combining economic judgement with historical perspective, Hamish weighs up the opportunities and dangers we face.
By: Hamish McRae
-
The Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution - from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality - and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
-
-
exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
-
Journey of the Mind
- How Thinking Emerged from Chaos
- By: Ogi Ogas, Sai Gaddam
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why do minds exist? How did mud and stone develop into beings that can experience longing, regret, love, and compassion - beings that are aware of their own experience? Until recently, science offered few answers to these existential questions. Journey of the Mind is the first book to offer a unified account of the mind that explains how consciousness, language, the Self, and civilization emerged incrementally out of chaos.
-
-
MUST read for studying intelligence, AI, or psychology
- By Chris on 04-24-22
By: Ogi Ogas, and others
-
The Information
- A History, a Theory, a Flood
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality - the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born.
-
-
Made me nostalgic
- By Amazon Customer on 05-07-11
By: James Gleick
-
Reality+
- Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy
- By: David J. Chalmers
- Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already.
-
-
A book that could have been an email
- By Peter C. on 04-15-22
-
A Thousand Brains
- A New Theory of Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
-
-
Starts out good, ends up a train wreck
- By Warren on 03-15-21
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
-
The History of Science: 1700-1900
- By: Frederick Gregory, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Frederick Gregory
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The scientific theories that were first discovered and made public in the years 1700-1900 are some of the most pivotal in history. Landmark theories of planetary motion, the workings of nature, and the speed of light were all ideas that took the world by storm. Now you can share in that story of discovery in a series of 36 lectures designed to give you a rock-solid understanding of the great discoveries of Newton, Darwin, Franklin, Pasteur, and so many others.
-
-
6 out of 5 stars :)
- By Mike on 01-16-17
By: Frederick Gregory, and others
-
The Beginning of Infinity
- Explanations That Transform the World
- By: David Deutsch
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe.
-
-
Worthwhile if you have the patience
- By Scott Feuless on 08-12-19
By: David Deutsch
Publisher's Summary
What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? In this remarkably clear and companionable audiobook, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them.
Skillfully narrated, Complexity: A Guided Tour - winner of the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science - offers a wide-ranging overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for its contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
More from the same
What listeners say about Complexity
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 03-09-22
Not a Good Book for Audio
I'll start by saying I'm a big fan of Melanie Mitchell. I listened to her book on artificial intelligence, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, and loved it. When I saw that her 2009 book on complexity was coming out on audio, I couldn't wait to listen to it b/c it's a topic I'm fascinated by. I've read or listened to about 10 books on the topic, including Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (a fabulous book), Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science (another great book which I recently reread after first reading it and not fully understanding it when it first came out in 1987), Geoffrey West's Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, Strogatz's Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, and several others.
So, I thought Melanie Mitchell's Complexity book would be perfect b/c she did an amazing job w/her highly sophisticated primer on AI without dumbing it down and she has a deep background in complexity science through her years at Santa Fe Institute (the epicenter of complexity science). Unfortunately, her Complexity is not a great book for LISTENING b/c it's loaded w/numbers and formulas which are really difficult to process (for me at least) in audio format. I returned the book after listening for 3hrs (thanks Audible) b/c it didn't appear that numeric and formula references/reading were going to change.
Complexity is a field rich w/formulas, constants, and other variables. Some lend themselves well to explanation (eg, power laws) but others require a dive into the formulas.
I'm giving it 4 stars b/c in written format, it's probably wonderful and it's unfair to ding Ms MItchell for writing a great book that doesn't do wonderfully in audio format.
If you're not familiar with Complexity, I'd highly recommend starting with Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. The book not only explains how complexity science came about and the cross discipline scientists (eg, physicists, biologists, economists, meteorologists...) who were involved in its creation but also what it is and why understanding complexity science is so relevant today.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- 11104
- 06-01-22
Interesting but not appropriate for an audiobook
I gave up half way through. Although the material is often fascinating, the math and computer code, although not complicated, can't be adequately understood as the audio flows by. As others have noted, this is not suited to the audiobook format. I would consider reading a text version.