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Can there be a science of consciousness? This issue has been the focus of three landmark conferences sponsored by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The first two conferences and books have become touchstones for the field. This volume presents a selection of invited papers from the third conference. It showcases recent progress in this maturing field by researchers from philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, phenomenology, and physics. It is divided into nine sections: the explanatory gap, color, neural correlates of consciousness, vision, emotion, the evolution and function of consciousness, physical reality, the timing of conscious experience, and phenomenology. Each section is preceded by an overview and commentary by the editors.Contributors: Dick J. Bierman, Jeffrey Burgdorf, A. Graham Cairns-Smith, William H. Calvin, Christian de Quincey, Frank H. Durgin, Vittorio Gallese, Elizabeth L. Glisky, Melvyn A. Goodale, Richard L. Gregory, Scott Hagan, C. Larry Hardin, C. A. Heywood, Masayuki Hirafuji, Nicholas Humphrey, Harry T. Hunt, Piet Hut, Alfred W. Kaszniak, Robert W. Kentridge, Stanley A. Klein, Charles D. Laughlin, Joseph Levine, Lianggang Lou, Shimon Malin, A. David Milner, Steven Mithen, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Stephen Palmer, Jaak Panksepp, Dean Radin, Steven Z. Rapcsak, Sheryl L. Reminger, Antti Revonsuo, Gregg H. Rosenberg, Yves Rossetti, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Jonathan Shear, Galen Strawson, Robert Van Gulick, Frances Vaughan, Franz X. Vollenweider, B. Alan Wallace, Douglas F. Watt, Larry Weiskrantz, Fred A. Wolf, Kunio Yasue, Arthur Zajonc. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fish oblivious of ocean - the West's self-induced paradox
The third and final volume of these Tucson debates is considerably smaller than the mammoth Tucson II. It is as usual a mixed bag hitting a low with the incredible Science as the creation of Darwinian "just-so" story tautologies by psychologist Nicholas Humphrey. The vacuous neo-Darwinian argument that things are as they are as they had to evolve that way is repeated yet again by Humphrey for consciousness as if he has made some profound discovery!!!
If one can point to any progress over the course of these conferences in the mid-1990s it was that Tucson III ends with a final section on Phenomenology with eight chapters - the best of which is by B. Alan Wallace on Buddhist Phenomenology. Many of these chapters refer to the need to learn from Hindu/Buddhist yogic phenomenology (many New-Age types are very biased towards Tibetan Buddhism)and Husserlian phenomenology as the only way to really understand Consciousness with its transformations into different states of which mainstream Western philosophy and science are totally ignorant. But even these chapters often start well pointing out the deficiencies of Western approaches but then the authors' own models are themselves based on the same sort of culturally-limited assumptions which they had only moments earlier been criticising! It is truly hard to shake off indoctrinations! For instance, Laughlin holds to the Neuronal Man myth and views consciousness as some emergent phenomenon in central nervous systems with no ontological argument to justify his views. Harry Hunt tries to explain away the mystical Light in terms of Gibson's sensory optical array and reduce profound ontological claims to simple, trivial metaphors! The great mystics all assert that the Light is NOT a sensory phenomenon and sensory processes are stopped in deep mysticism!!! Jonathan Shear conflates Kant's Transcendental Unity of Apprehension or "Transcendental Ego" with the mystical Pure Consciousness when the yogic traditions make it clear that the Ego is not the same as the Deeper Self of the Pure Consciousness and that the subject/object duality disappears only when the Ego dissolves into the Light of Pure Consciousness!!!
In the first section on the "Explanatory Gap" Galen Strawson begins to appreciate the Neutral Monist panpsychist position but then refuses to budge from conceptions of "physical reality"- a term also used by Hameroff without any self-questioning. Only physicist Malin discussing Schrodinger's concept of Objectivation of Nature by Science and Whitehead's 'occasions' as "throbs" of experience (just like the Spanda (vibrations) of Nondual Kashmiri Shaivism) and astrophysicist Piet Hut who points out that we only know the outside ("physical") world as part of our internal subjective world and that a new metaphysical basis to science is needed begin to grasp that Objectivation is the despiritualization of Nature by abstraction and mistaking the concept for Reality itself!
Harry Hunt makes a good point as to what whether the conference is about a Science of Consciousness or moving toward a Spiritualization of Science. All this confusion stems from the Mind/Body dualism which, as Werner Heisenberg pointed out in Physics and Philosophy, permeates the whole of Western Thought. Its roots go well beyond Descartes to the Christian myth of Creatio ex nihilo in which Nature is created out of Absolute Nothing by an anthropomorphic God completely separate from Creation (i.e. Spirit/Nature dualism). To cut a long story short, no resolution of the problem of consciousness in the West will come till the universal Light Pure Consciousness (the No-thing-ness Plenum/Void)is understood as the Ground of All Being and the physical World as a manifestation through energetic vibrations. The Buddhist/Whiteheadian emphasis on the energetic vibrations as discontinuities ignoring the universal Ground also leads nowhere as in Christian de Quincey's strange contribution.
In fact, I had already identified the physical correlate of the inner Light of Pure Consciousness with the brainwaves of the Brainstem Reticular Activating system in 1994 (see my other reviews) so all this huff-and-puff and brouhaha at Tucson was like a lot of fish unaware of the ocean in which they were all swimming! See my The Oneness/Otherness Mystery and perhaps also Philosophy of Space and Time and the Inner Constitution of Nature by mathematical physicist and mystic Michael Whiteman(Heisenberg himself checked the chapter on Quantum Mechanics in this).
Sutapas Bhattacharya
... Read more

Product Description
The book presents the recent achievements on bifurcation studies of nonlinear dynamical systems. The contributing authors of the book are all distinguished researchers in this interesting subject area. The first two chapters deal with the fundamental theoretical issues of bifurcation analysis in smooth and non-smooth dynamical systems. The cell mapping methods are presented for global bifurcations in stochastic and deterministic, nonlinear dynamical systems in the third chapter. The fourth chapter studies bifurcations and chaos in time-varying, parametrically excited nonlinear dynamical systems. The fifth chapter presents bifurcation analyses of modal interactions in distributed, nonlinear, dynamical systems of circular thin von Karman plates.The theories, methods and results presented in this book are of great interest to scientists and engineers in a wide range of disciplines. This book can be adopted as references for mathematicians, scientists, engineers and graduate students conducting research in nonlinear dynamical systems.

· New Views for Difficult Problems
· Novel Ideas and Concepts
· Hilbert's 16th Problem
· Normal Forms in Polynomial Hamiltonian Systems
· Grazing Flow in Non-smooth Dynamical Systems
· Stochastic and Fuzzy Nonlinear Dynamical Systems
· Fuzzy Bifurcation
· Parametrical, Nonlinear Systems
· Mode Interactions in nonlinear dynamical systems ... Read more

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The core of ths book presents a theory developed by the author to combine the recent insight into empirical data with mathematical models in freeway traffic research based on dynamical non-linear processes.

Customer Reviews (1)

very partcular topic
I found this book very good for just ONE particular type of Traffic and not very general as it could be deduced from the title. Very good for highways but nothing else, even is quite limited from the Complex System analysis. Very good if that is your main interest (freeways) but take care if you are interested in more complex situations of traffic with more constraints and boundary conditions, like traffic lights, crossing roads and so on. ... Read more

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Metaphors, generalizations and unifications are natural and desirable ingredients of the evolution of scientific theories and concepts. Physics, in particular, obviously walks along these paths since its very beginning. This book focuses on nonextensive statistical mechanics, a current generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) statistical mechanics, one of the greatest monuments of contemporary physics. Conceived more than 130 years ago by Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs, the BG theory exhibits uncountable – some of them impressive – successes in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computational sciences, to name a few. Presently, more than two thousand publications, by over 1800 scientists around the world, have been dedicated to the nonextensive generalization. Remarkable applications have emerged, and its mathematical grounding is by now relatively well established. A pedagogical introduction to its concepts – nonlinear dynamics, extensivity of the nonadditive entropy, global correlations, generalization of the standard CLT’s, among others – is presented in this book as well as a selection of paradigmatic applications in various sciences together with diversified experimental verifications of some of its predictions.

• This is the first pedagogical book on the subject, written by the proponent of the theory
• Presents many applications to interdisciplinary complex phenomena in virtually all sciences, ranging from physics to medicine, from economics to biology, through signal and image processing and others
• Offers a detailed derivation of results, illustrations and for the first time detailed presentation of Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics

Product Description
In this book David and Alex Bennet propose a new model for organizations that enables them to react more quickly and fluidly to today's fast-changing, dynamic business environment: the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (ICAS). ICAS is a new organic model of the firm based on recent research in complexity and neuroscience, and incorporating networking theory and knowledge management, and turns the living system metaphor into a reality for organizations. This book synthesizes new thinking about organizational structure from the fields listed above into ICAS, a new systems model for the successful organization of the future designed to help leaders and managers of knowledge organizations succeed in a non-linear, complex, fast-changing and turbulent environment.Technology enables connectivity, and the ICAS model takes advantage of that connectivity by fostering the development of dynamic, effective and trusting relationships in a new organizational structure.

This book outlines the model in chapter four, and then breaks down the model into its components in the next two chapters. This is a benefit to readers since different components of the model can be implemented at different times, so the book can guide implementation of one or all of the components as a manager sees fit. There are eight characteristics of the ICAS: organizational intelligence, unity and shared purpose, optimum complexity, selectivity, knowledge centricity, flow, permeable boundaries, and multi-dimensionality.

* Clear portrait of the successful organization of the future using latest research in knowledge management and complexity theory
* Shows concretely how to design an organization that can successfully respond to constant change and uncertainty.
* Practical examples woven throughout the discussion. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A Great Treatment od a Complex Topic
The Bennet's provide a dialogue of complex systems that is exceptionally thought provoking.They have a logical progression in developing their concepts and are mindful of reinforcing the basic concepts by continually referring the reader back to the basics of the introductory chapters.Experienced managers will be able to relate the concepts presented in this book to the ones they have experienced.It will allow those mediocre managers to set their goals in proper line and also help those who have been successful in either reinventing their organization from the ground up or honing a functioning organization into a finer running machine.This is not a book you can read and absorb in a short time.In fact, my first reading took several months.My second reading continues in an even more deliberate way, selecting certain chapters that relate to my real world.

A book you keep on a nearby shelf to pull down periodically for a short read about a specific organization concept of interest.

The Application of ICAS to KM Education
At Kent State University our graduate interdisciplinary program, Information & Knowledge Management (IAKM), was founded two years ago by a number of departments and schools: Communication Studies, Computer Science, Graduate School of Management, Journalism & Mass Communication, Library and Information Science, and Visual Communication Design. This rich mosaic of experience and knowledge is a seedbed for teaching the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System (ICAS) as described in Organizational Survival in the New World: The Intelligent Complex Adaptive System, by Alex and David Bennet.

Many of our learners in the IAKM Program are mid-career professionals, managers, and executives who seek a blueprint and framework for constructing and sustaining the new, Second Generation Knowledge Management (SGKM) organization. Alex and David have provided a rich foundation in the theory behind ICAS and draw in a resulting learner dialogue that demonstrate how theory can be practically engaged in the dynamic environments of our evolving institutions, businesses, and governments. This handbook will be used to design a new course in IAKM that prototypes a successful and innovative ICAS organization-covering aspects of its architecture, structure and infrastructure, culture, leadership, problem-solving and decision-making apparatus, collaboration, and potential institutional outcomes.

Alex and David Bennet are exemplary Master Builders who draw upon Complexity Theory. This book fulfils the needs displayed by many highly motivated learners who wish to comprehend and apply the elements and theories that are required to construct and launch a competitive and agile ICAS organization.

Of particular value to me was Part IV: The Knowledge Solution, which focused on the new skills and competencies needed by the new knowledge worker to help attain organizational survival and, more importantly, organizational success. This seminal monograph has augmented the goal of my research into the development of a Knowledge Management Educational Framework (KMEF) because it contains rich material with which I can effectively teach KM as well as fertile substance for my academic research agenda. I highly recommend this book because it will prove useful to academics as well as practitioners.

Breakthough for Organizational Thinking
This is one of only a few books to attempt a fresh expansive view of new organizational infrastructure, principles, and tools in nearly a half-century of post-industrial society experience. One might say that until the last decade of knowledge management thinking, there has not been the perspective to do this.But, I don't buy it.Fritz Machlup's work in the 50's extensively described the impact of knowledge work on the economy.Drucker clearly saw it in the 50's.What have we been thinking about?

You can't read this book without disagreeing with the Bennets.They touch too many subjects too dear to too many of us.Still, give them credit for so many new ideas.They have laid the basis for a broad dialogue grounded in the credible view of complexity theory.The Bennets have sent out the invitations, they have set the table, who will join the feast? It is challenging for me to read this book.I constantly want to be able to discuss it with others.There is so much depth and breadth at the same time.Also, you may not be able to read it without being remorseful about your own organization, especially if you work in a complex enterprise.Recommend you scan the table of contents and then start reading.As the Bennets say, go to Chapter 19 if you need grounding in complexity theory.I found it useful to jump ahead and read chapters as my interest was peaked. Then go back and pick up from where you left off.

The Bennets' research alone has immense value.This book should become a college text for graduate work.They are well grounded in complexity theory, nevertheless, they pull from many fields, disciplines, and theorists to build this new body of knowledge. The book would rock an MBA program.

Drucker says that figuring this sort of thing out will determine how well we'll compete in this new century.The Bennets give us new frameworks for describing what we're working with and how we can organize for breakthroughs on multiple levels.In the meantime, hopefully a leader at Homeland Security is reading this book.

Outstanding Book for Executives in a Competitive Environment
The authors provide a valuable resource for executives striving to assure their companies excel in a competitive and complex environment. Dave and Alex Bennet use their practical management experience and excellent insight in knowledge theory to address the challenges facing organizations in a rapidly changing world. Their explanation of the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System ICAS provides a model for successfully handling the increasing demands of a swiftly changing business atmosphere. As background, the book provides a description of the differences between Bureaucratic and World Class organizations. It explores the emergent properties of the ICAS and how it works in practice. The Bennets present a variety of new and innovative techniques for improving organizational performance. The ICAS and the processes described in this book are a roadmap for organizations to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. I highly recommend this book for executives who strive to excel in a complex and ever changing competitive environment.

Outstanding Book for Executives in a Competitive Environment
The authors provide a valuable resource for executives striving to assure their companies excel in a competitive and complex environment. Dave and Alex Bennet use their practical management experience and excellent insight in knowledge theory to address the challenges facing organizations in a rapidly changing world. Their explanation of the Intelligent Complex Adaptive System ICAS provides a model for successfully handling the increasing demands of a swiftly changing business atmosphere. As background, the book provides a description of the differences between Bureaucratic and World Class organizations. It explores the emergent properties of the ICAS and how it works in practice. The Bennets present a variety of new and innovative techniques for improving organizational performance. The ICAS and the processes described in this book are a roadmap for organizations to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. I highly recommend this book for executives who strive to excel in a complex and ever changing competitive environment. ... Read more

Product Description

The long-term governance of radioactive waste continues to be a major complex and contentious socio-technical issue worldwide. Traditionally, it has been considered as mainly a challenge to scientists and engineers to develop technical "solutions" to specific problems. But increasingly these narrow solutions have been enlarged by wider societal considerations such as ethics, public involvement, control and retrievability – needs that have in the meanwhile been recognised by the nuclear community, at least in a general way. In this book, we analyse motives for a broad discourse as well as suggest prerequisites to launch it. The author attempts to give a novel, empirically based and technically sound treatment of fundamental issues in long-term management and governance. Written to be accessible to a wide selection of the interested public, the study proposes a combination of technical design issues, analysis methods and institutional backup in a dynamic procedure, and with involvement at all levels of political, commercial and social life.

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With adaptive, complex networks, the evolution of the network topology and the dynamical processes on the network are equally important and often fundamentally entangled. Recent research has shown that such networks can exhibit a plethora of new phenomena which are ultimately required to describe many real-world networks. Some of those phenomena include robust self-organization towards dynamical criticality, formation of complex global topologies based on simple, local rules, and the spontaneous division of "labor" in which an initially homogenous population of network nodes self-organizes into functionally distinct classes. These are just a few. This book is a state-of-the-art survey of those unique networks. In it, leading researchers set out to define the future scope and direction of some of the most advanced developments in the vast field of complex network science and its applications.

Product Description
This pioneering book describes the applications of agent-based modeling to financial markets. It presents a new paradigm for finance, where markets are treated as complex systems whose behavior emerges as a result of interactions of market participants, market institutions, and market rules. This includes both a presentation of the conceptual model and its software implementation. It also summarises the result of the profound research on the successful practical application of this new approach to answer questions regarding the Nasdaq Stock Market s decimalization that was implemented in 2001.The book presents conceptual foundations for modeling markets as complex systems. It describes the agent-based model of the Nasdaq stock market, including strategies used by market-makers and investors, market participants interactions, and impacts of rules and regulations. It includes analyses of simulation behavior, comparison with the behaviors observed in the real-world markets (existence of fat tails, spread clustering, etc.), and predictions about possible outcomes of decimalization. A framework for calibrating the market behavior and individual market-makers strategies to historical data is also presented. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Better try visualize what kind of book you need!
Before buying this one, better read some of the 5 stars comments and also some of the 1 stars comments! I wish would be possible rate like minus 1 star, but is not poosible! I really can't find too many good points to this book. It might be good for people just looking for another perspective on project management, but even for this purpose on this site there are a lot of cheaper, and far more effective and efficient books. I can't believe I wasted my money on it. I'd better go on slot machine. Seems here are several reviewers working to stimulate sales, don't let yourself pushed to the wrong decision! This is the worst project management book I ever see.

5 stars? Are you kidding?
Why I gave this book 1-star:

- I've owned this book for a number of years, but have never been able to finish reading it. The writers use a poor, technically-oriented style of writing that is obviously meant to appeal to technically-oriented folks.
- Once you decipher what they are trying to say you realize that there is not much to it in the way of valuable content.
- The accompanying CD is a waste of time, merely a sales pitch for additional products.
- There are numerous other project management books and resources that are much better written and more practical than than this.

A practical guide, full of insights
I found this to be an excellent book, particularly for those of us trying to make sense out of the wide range of project management approaches. It is a valuable compliment to the Project Management Institute's PMBOK, which is functionally based and organized as categories of required knowledge.Visualizing Project Management is behavior based and provides a project manager and the project team a roadmap for success and a resource for solving problems. Since project management often encounters the intersection of one or more processes, three-dimensional models are used to clarify these often confusing relationships. Many of these relationships include the technical development or systems engineering aspects and they are plainly conveyed so that the non-technical person can benefit. The section on project control is refreshing. Most books represent project control as only a reactive process to bad news. These authors emphasize proactive project control, establishing the proper control systems, yet are appropriately reactive with corrective action when things go wrong. Overall, an enlightening approach to complexity and technical project management.

Call to Arms
In his foreward to Visualizing Project Management (second edition), Norman Augustine, retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, reminds us of the unfortunate high incidence of failures in IT projects.Mr. Augustine then notes the key role of the project manager in producing success or failure.This book was published in 2000, and I maintain that the failure rate is still too high.In fact, I'll use the book's concepts to very briefly analyze a failed NASA project later in this review.First though, why and how can this book help?
What's unique about this book is that it contains, all at once, a call to arms, weapons handbooks, and mechanisms for producing a battle plan for YOUR project.
The call to arms is conveyed successfully through the many high-level diagrams, and of course the message behind the diagrams. For example, the orchestra metaphor (each musician is a team member and the project manager is the conductor) is one of the most powerful images.The "common vocabulary" (score) keeps everybody on track.Further, the key system engineering concept of the project manager pulling diverse specialties (strings, percussion, etc.) together is illustrated. Chapter I has an explicit call to arms (Why is Project Management a Critical Issue?); the rest of Part I and two chapters of Part II set up the rest of the framework needed to use the weapon handbooks and create the battle plan.
Weapons in the arsenal of the project manager are the Project Cycle and the (ten) Project Management Elements in Part II.This handbook-type information should be reformatted to be more usable.The current very basic numbering scheme, and the interspersed exercises make reference difficult.A separate workbook could be published with the exercises.While much of this information is familiar, there are some real zingers that show more depth of experience than many other project management books.For example, the emphasis on project control (one of the elements) is indeed different from "most project management texts (which) describe project control as comparing actuals to plan (status)."You actually need corrective action!The authors (and I) "were flabbergasted to find that the word "requirements" did not even appear"...."in a well-respected reference from the project management field".
And the battle plan?That is the "orthogonal" project model - with an axis made up of nine elements as the spokes of a wheel (project leadership being the tenth, on the rim) and the project cycle on the axle.You'll have to get the book to appreciate the applicability of the model.But that is the only the first "generic" battle plan.It has to be worked and applied in YOUR organization.No more "we used to have a project management plan, somewhere".
The authors' preface mentions that Chapter 9 (Applying the Process) has been added to address the Internet time goal of "better, cheaper, faster". The book has numerous case descriptions.I've applied some of the book's concepts to the WIRE case study.NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) mission failed soon after launch on March 4, 1999 when the telescope/cryostat ejected prematurely.NASA has published some very valuable lessons learned (by the way, the book highlights the need for "lessons learned to get into the hands (and minds) of those who would benefit most")... One of NASA's lessons can be related to the orchestra metaphor:"WIRE failed because people could not or would not communicate well with each other. ...These folks feared oversight and criticism and hid behind organizational boundaries".Another lesson concerns the risks in shortcutting the project cycle: the "belief that we pushed the faster, better, cheaper paradigm too hard, such that key corners were cut too closely."So heed the call to arms, master the weapons, and create your own battle plan.We'll win more battles if we really apply the lessons of this book.

Horrible - A Waste of Time and Paper!
I recently started with new company and needed some reference materials on project management.This book was intriguing because I thought it would allow me to use a right-brained approach to understand the topic (ie visualization).Instead, I got dissertation from the school of MBA managerial double-speak.Nothing in this book is clearly written.You will spend hours trying to figure out what these clowns are trying to say.An example from page 119:

"At each level, the DA&R process is driven by higher level requirements, constaints of approved baselines such as the utilities provided to the structure and the influences of users and stakeholders at the system level and at every level of decomposition to the level under construction."

No, I am not making this up, this is what these authors pass off as writing.

In my opinion, these two authors, and some of the reviewers that gave this book high marks, are in a profession that needs to build its reputation by making what they do seem complex and scientific.Absolute bunk! ... Read more

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More than sixty contributions in From Animals to Animats 2 byresearchers in ethology, ecology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence,robotics, and related fields investigate behaviors and the underlyingmechanisms that allow animals and, potentially, robots to adapt andsurvive in uncertain environments. Topics covered: The Animat Approachto Adaptive Behavior. Perception and Motor Control. Action Selection andBehavioral Sequences. Cognitive Maps and Internal World Models.Learning. Evolution. Collective Behavior. Topics covered: The AnimatApproach to Adaptive Behavior. Perception and Motor Control. ActionSelection and Behaviorial Sequences. Cognitive Maps and Internal WorldModels. Learning. Evolution. Collective Behavior. ... Read more

Product Description
Offers an alternative to the belief that optimization is the only solution to increasingly complex problems, a series of frameworks to help an organization employ adaptive principles, establish collaboration, and provide a path for organizations needing to use an adaptive approach on larger projects.Softcover. DLC: Computer software--Development. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Keeping cool in the demanding e-development world
If you're about to start a new software development project, it's worth reading this book first. It will help you make some sense of today's demands on you that software development should be fast and iterative while meeting ever-changing requirements. James Highsmith offers and explains concepts like "adaptive" and "emergent" and explains what to do with them in real life.

It's not a complete how-to book, though. While it has a lot of detail, be prepared to read it and discuss with your co-workers to figure out what part of the ideas you may be able to apply on your upcoming project.

"Rock climbing, Joel ! Rock climbing !"
The quote is from Mystery Science Theater 3000, and is used to identify a movie scene so repetitious that it seems like torture. But it could also apply to this book. I've lost count of how many times Highsmith has padded his text with rock climbing metaphors. It's annoying and distracting and it adds only fluff. I've developed the practice of skipping the paragraph whenever Highsmith starts another inane mountaineering passage.

There is some meat in this book, but you've got to nibble around a whole lot of loess to get it.

Leadership and collaboration
"Adaptive Software Development" is a light, human-powered methodology for development of complex software systems. Unlike Extreme Programming, Adaptive Software Development is less disciplined and does not mandate individual techniques like On-Site Customer, Pair Programming or Automated Tests. It rather encourages adaptation, which depends on leadership and collaboration.

One of the vital components of Adaptive Software Development is clearly articulated Project Mission, Shared Vision and Clear Focus, and it is the responsibility of the whole team to create the mission and use it on a day-to-day basis as an alignment tool to keep the common direction.

I would also highly recommend "Agile Software Development" by Alistair Cockburn in addition to this book.

MustRead
Compelling case for Adaptive Software Development (ASD), an approach enabling successful completion of complex software development projects.Draws on the theory of complex adaptive systems (CAS).Explains using judicious analogies with mountain climbing.Assembles ideas from the author's own extensive experience and readings.Describes in some detail the ideas of other authors that have influenced ASD.Excellent annotated bibliography allows the reader to pursue further study in any of a number of different directions.

It's hard to express just how good this book is.I can't recommend it highly enough.If you're interested in the currents of thought on software development variously labeled "extreme" or "agile," then I believe you will find Adaptive Software Development to be very near to their sources.

The author distinguishes a "complex" project from one that is merely "complicated."As one might well imagine, he would classify a project to develop the avionics software for the NASA space shuttle as complicated--but not complex:its goal is well defined and attainable by applying the stable laws of Newtonian physics.Development of an internet-based product for the consumer marketplace on the other hand is complex because one might expect almost anything to change during the course of such a project:target technology, competitive offerings, financing, marketing strategy, etc.

Complexity arises from moving fast in a continually changing environment.

Adaptive Software Development comprises
(1) Adaptive Conceptual Model--the theoretical foundation,
(2) Adaptive Development Model--a software development lifecycle for complex projects, and
(3) Adaptive Management Model--principles for managing complex projects.

(1) The Adaptive Conceptual Model proposes that a software development organization is a complex adaptive system like a marketplace or a flock of birds.According to the theory, CASs composed of independent agents acting for themselves without centralized control can under proper circumstances develop "emergent" capabilities exceeding the mere sum of the capabilities of the individual agents.

It is further proposed that only emergent capabilities are powerful enough to tame complexity.Software development organizations aspiring to do so must create the proper circumstances for the emergence of superior capabilities.The Development Model and the Management Model show the way.

(2) The Adaptive Development Model has three phases:Speculate, Collaborate, Learn.A typical project is expected to cycle through the phases several times.The output of each successive cycle converges on the final product of the project.

The beginning of each cycle is called "speculation" in preference to "planning" to reject the command-and-control philosophy that stifles emergence.ASD establishes a general direction, hypothesizes a product with a set of components, then puts the developers to work.Tasks are not specified in the ASD project plan--only the components to be completed by the end of the cycle.

Collaboration is the phase where development occurs.Under conditions of "diversity, rich relationships, unfettered information flow, and good leadership (p. 45)" collaboration can be the crucible of emergent capability.To foster this emergence, the project leader must keep the team "poised at the edge of chaos," imposing just enough rigor on the collaboration to keep it from spinning out of control.To impose any more rigor would stifle emergence.Borrowing from Ralph Stacey, Mr. Highsmith cites five dimensions for measuring how closely a project team approaches chaos.The goal is to structure collaboration so that it has just enough--but never too much--of each of the following:

1.Information Flow
2.Diversity
3.Rich Connectivity
4.Contained Anxiety
5.Power Differential.

Mr. Highsmith observes that adaptation, not optimization, is the key to success in a complex ecosystem.Software developers adapt by learning.ASD ends every cycle with specific collaborative learning activities including customer focus groups, technical reviews, post-mortems, etc.The adaptations resulting from the learning phase keep the output of subsequent cycles converging on a successful product.

(3) ASD gives to the project leader responsibility for establishing the conditions under which superior capabilities emerge from the collaboration of team members.This responsibility entails "the ability to help teams to understand the project's mission, to stand back and let the group struggle with mistakes, to encourage learning, to balance the need for flexibility and rigor, and to force decisions onto the group (pp. 209-210)."

To balance successfully between flexibility and rigor--poised at the edge of chaos--managers of complex projects must attend primarily to two structural elements:workstate and network.

ASD manages workSTATE in preference to workFLOW.Instead of monitoring the completion of tasks, the project leader tracks the completion of components.Tasks are not necessarily prescribed.Team members decide for themselves how to build the components.To scale up to large projects, workstate management defines explicit milestones for each component describing its degree of completion.Progress is tracked against these milestones.

The emergence of superior capability through collaboration depends on the communication network of the collaborators.For smaller, collocated teams with sufficient interpersonal skills, it will emerge informally.For larger teams, ASD prescribes a conscious effort to build it and to maintain it.The remote nodes of a virtual team are all too likely to fall into a state of insufficient interaction.

The collaboration network should provide team members just a little more information than they need, stopping just short of overload.Information clutter must be avoided.Content must not be provided without context (author, revision date, approval status, for example).The formal properties of the collaboration network must be identified and tuned to the needs of the complex project.A "collaboration service layer" of tools (mostly web-based) and practices must be installed.A new role, collaboration facilitator, extending the role of JAD facilitator, should be created to tend the collaboration network.

Is a software development organization really a complex adaptive system?No matter. Mr. Highsmith has ably used the theory of complex adaptive systems as a powerful metaphor for unifying many existing ideas about managing complex software development and for generating new ones--with at least as much validity as older theories have been applied in the past.Stimulating and refreshing.A must-read by any standard.

Solid theory behind the Agile movement
Highsmith postulates: "If the core of our belief system about managing organizations is rooted in the old science of deterministic Newtonian physics and survival-of-the-fittest Darwinian biology, then only a new science such as complex adaptive systems with an equally powerful philosophy and scientific foundation provides the credibility necessary for a major management cultural evolution."

He then persuasively uses the science and language of complex adaptive system theory to provide new conceptual models to guide complex software development projects.His presentation is refreshingly well thought out, synthesizing much of the best ideas in science and business management in the past decade to software development.

Highsmith succeeds is providing a theoretical basis for the Agile methodologies that are sprouting up everywhere (XP being the best known).

If you are looking for specific best practices of software development, look elsewhere. But if you want to understand the true nature of software development as well as principles in harnessing change as a competitive advantage, you will not find a better book.I couldn't recommend it any more strongly. ... Read more

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This is a preliminary contribution to a mathematical research field which is growing impetuously and will attract increasing attention from medical researchers in the years to come. In this book the authors have collected the contribution from several Italian research groups that are successfully working on this fascinating and challenging field. Every chapter will deal with a specific subfield, with the aim of providing an overview of the subject and an account of the most recent research results.

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This collection of review articles is devoted to the modeling of ecological, epidemiological and evolutionary systems. Theoretical mathematical models are perhaps one of the most powerful approaches available for increasing our understanding of the complex population dynamics in these natural systems. Exciting new techniques are currently being developed to meet this challenge, such as generalized or structural modeling, adaptive dynamics or multiplicative processes. Many of these new techniques stem from the field of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory, where even the simplest mathematical rule can generate a rich variety of dynamical behaviors that bear a strong analogy to biological populations. ... Read more

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Readers learn to predict and control low- and high-dimensional as well as continuous- and discrete-time nonlinear systems dynamics in complex variables. In the final chapter, all the previously developed methods are used to present the "Holy Grail" of modern physical and cosmological science, the search for the "theory of everything" and the "true" cosmological dynamics.

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Modularity—the attempt to understand systems as integrations of partially independent and interacting units—is today a dominant theme in the life sciences, cognitive science, and computer science. The concept goes back at least implicitly to the Scientific (or Copernican) Revolution, and can be found behind later theories of phrenology, physiology, and genetics; moreover, art, engineering, and mathematics rely on modular design principles. This collection broadens the scientific discussion of modularity by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, including artificial life, cognitive science, economics, evolutionary computation, developmental and evolutionary biology, linguistics, mathematics, morphology, paleontology, physics, theoretical chemistry, philosophy, and the arts.

The contributors debate and compare the uses of modularity, discussing the different disciplinary contexts of "modular thinking" in general (including hierarchical organization, near-decomposability, quasi-independence, and recursion) or of more specialized concepts (including character complex, gene family, encapsulation, and mosaic evolution); what modules are, why and how they develop and evolve, and the implication for the research agenda in the disciplines involved; and how to bring about useful cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer on the topic. The book includes a foreword by the late Herbert A. Simon addressing the role of near-decomposability in understanding complex systems.

Contributors: Lee Altenberg, Lauren W. Ancel-Meyers, Carl Anderson, Robert B. Brandon, Angela D. Buscalioni, Raffaele Calabretta, Werner Callebaut, Anne De Joan, Rafael Delgado-Buscalioni, Gunther J. Eble, Walter Fontana, Fernand Gobet, Alicia de la Iglesia, Slavik V. Jablan, Luigi Marengo, Daniel W. McShea, Jason Mezey, D. Kimbrough Oller, Domenico Parisi, Corrado Pasquali, Diego Rasskin-Gutman, Gerhard Schlosser, Herbert A. Simon, Roger D. K. Thomas, Marco Valente, Boris M. Velichkovsky, Günter P. Wagner, Rasmus G. Winter

Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Too Modular
This is a very interesting book. Or at least, it's a book about a cluster of very interesting topics, and occasionally contains interesting insights about these topics.

The problem is that the book is a bit too modular - the chapters don't work very well together. Every author seems to have his own concept of modularity. As several of the chapters are primarily concerned with defining modularity, this could be taken to be a good thing, but it isn't. The simple reason is that many of the concepts of modularity are simply not interesting to many readers. For me, Calabretta's chapter was very interesting, as well as Simon's introduction and some other chapters, but the chapters on modularity in art and in animal skeletons were just plain uninteresting. (Which is not to say that they are bad chapters in themselves, they are probably higly relevant to some people.)

Given that the book is likely to contain just a few chapters that interest you, I think the price is a bit too high for it to be worth buying. ... Read more

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Effective organizational leaders need to understand thebig picture. Effective leaders observe more carefully, diagnose moreaccurately, and understand more deeply. Navigating the subtleties oforganizations, through the perspective of complex systems, is thefocus of this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

worth the read
The first half of this book can be read on either a personal or professional level; a light-weight read.The second half is more professional, but doesn't get bogged down with self-importance.

Interesting Book for the Novice
This is an interesting and well written book for the novice who wants to know more about thinking holistically. ... Read more

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This book originated from a workshop held at the DATE 2005 conference, namely Designing Complex SOCs. State-of-the-art in issues related to System-on-Chip (SoC) design by leading experts in the fields, it covers IP development, verification, integration, chip implementation, testing and software. It contains valuable academic and industrial examples for those involved with the design of complex SOCs.

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Complex System Reliability presents a state-of-the-art treatment of complex multi-channel system reliability assessment and provides the requisite tools, techniques and algorithms required for designing, evaluating and optimizing ultra-reliable redundant systems.Critical topics that make Complex System Reliability a unique and definitive resource include:• redundant system analysis for k-out-of-n systems (including complex systems with embedded k-out-of-n structures) involving both perfect and imperfect fault coverage;• imperfect fault coverage analysis techniques, including algorithms for assessing the reliability of redundant systems in which each element is subject to a given coverage value (element level coverage) or in which the system uses voting to avoid the effects of a failed element (fault level coverage); and• state-of-the-art binary decision diagram analysis techniques, including the latest and most efficient algorithms for the reliability assessment of large, complex redundant systems. This practical presentation includes numerous fully worked examples that provide detailed explanations of both the underlying design principles and the techniques (such as combinatorial, recursive and binary decision diagram algorithms) used to obtain quantitative results. Many of the worked examples are based on the design of modern digital fly-by-wire control system technology.Complex System Reliability provides in-depth coverage of systems subject to either perfect or imperfect fault coverage and also the most recent techniques for correctly assessing the reliability of redundant systems that use mid-value-select voting as their primary means of redundancy management. It is a valuable resource for those involved in the design and reliability assessment of highly reliable systems, particularly in the aerospace and automotive sectors. ... Read more

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This book explains how to apply the most modern systems engineering modeling approaches not only to products, processes and business enterprises, but also to the description of the process of systems engineering. The result is an easily understood description of the systems engineering process which can be tailored to the many methodologies, notations and tools that compete for adoption. The book provides an engineering basis for: specification of near-optimal products and processes; tailoring the systems engineering process to commercial or aerospace projects; selection of a specific methodlogy and notation; selection and development of tools for automation; and training students in a systems development disciplines. ... Read more

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Language is one of the most challenging issues that remain to be explained from the physiological and psychological points of view. As a complex system, its formal modelling and simulation present important difficulties. Models proposed up to now have not been able to give either a coherent explanation of natural language or a satisfactory computational model for the processing of natural language. To investigate natural language, we need to cross traditional academic boundaries in order to solve the different problems related to language.This book is an attempt to connect and integrate several academic disciplines and technologies in the pursuit of a common task: the study of language. The main goal of the book is to boost the interchange of knowledge and viewpoints between specialists who, working on linguistics, biology or computation, have an interest in bringing their methods together in order to provide innovative and challenging tools and formalisms to approach and improve theories and models on languages. The subject of this book will attract researchers from many fields who are interested in natural or artificial languages and want to enrich their scientific research with theories, methods and ideas coming from different disciplines. People dealing with linguistics, computer science, formal language theory and biology may find in this book new and challenging ideas. ... Read more