A Broad Research Program in the Sciences of Complexity

圣塔菲研究所（SFI）将在其迄今为止的成功基础上进行跨学科研究，以理解由相对简单、高度相互作用的组件组成的系统中产生的复杂行为。具体来说，SFI将通过数学调查和模拟，结合实证研究和数据分析，研究真实复杂系统的紧急行为，这些系统的组成部分本身就是复杂的——比如基因调控网络、金融市场和社会机构。参与这些活动的研究人员将来自许多学科，包括生物学、物理学、数学、计算、社会行为和经济科学。整合和综合是这项研究的基础，因此，它是对学科科学特征的更完善的还原和分析方法的补充。当然，像免疫系统或全球经济这样的复杂系统必须被分解成它们的组成部分，并且这些部分的行为必须尽可能完整地阐明，以便随后将整个系统理解为一个整体。但是，除了了解这些组成部分之外，还需要了解它们的集体组织。有必要分别提及各部分及其组织，以提请注意这样一个事实，即各部分的性质本身并不能唯一地决定它们的集体组织；可能有许多组织结构具有相同的部分。此外，观察到的组织，或新兴的集体实体，本身是独立于其部分而永存的。因此，即使个体交易者周转，市场仍然存在；即使生物体死亡和被替换，生态系统仍然存在；即使分子降解，细胞仍然存在。SFI将进一步发展涌现的丰富概念，通过严格的数学研究和对具体现实世界复杂现象的经验数据的深入研究，加强对涌现的理论理解，包括：网络的结构和动力学、进化中的新颖性、自然计算、市场进化、人类行为和社会结构的涌现特性。

The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) will build significantly upon its successes to date in conducting transdisciplinary research toward understanding the complex behaviors arising in systems composed of relatively simple, highly interacting components. Specifically, SFI will study the emergent behaviors of real complex systems whose components are themselves complex-genetic regulatory networks, financial markets and social institutions for example-through mathematical investigation and simulation in concert with empirical studies and data analysis. Researchers involved in these activities will come from many disciplines, including biology, physics, mathematics, computation, and the social behavioral, and economic sciences.Integration and synthesis underlie this research, which is thus complementary to the more well-established methods of reduction and analysis that characterize disciplinary science. It is, of course, essential that complex systems such as the immune system or the global economy be decomposed into their constituent parts and that the behavior of these parts be elucidated as completely as possible for the subsequent understanding of the system as a whole. But in addition to understanding these constituents, understanding of their collective organization is required. It is necessary to refer separately to the parts and their organization to call attention to the fact that the properties of the parts alone do not uniquely determine their collective organization; there are many organizational structures possible with the same parts. Furthermore, the observed organization, or the emergent collective entity, is itself perpetuated independently of its parts. Thus, a market persists even as the individual traders turn over, an ecosystem persists even as the organisms die and are replaced, a cell persists, though its molecules degrade. SFI will further develop the fertile concept of emergence by strengthening the theoretical understanding of emergence through rigorous mathematical study direct and by intensive study of empirical data from specific real-world complex phenomena, including: Structure and Dynamics of Networks, Novelty in Evolution, Computation in Nature, Market Evolution, and Human Behavior and the Emergent Properties of Social Structures.