Would-Be Worlds: How Simulation is Changing the Frontiers of Science - Hardcover

Casti, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471123080 ISBN 13: 9780471123088

Publisher: Wiley, 1996

Synopsis

Critical acclaim for John Casti's previous book

"Five Golden Rules is caviar for the inquiring reader. Anyone who enjoyed solving math problems in high school will be able to follow the author's explanations, even if high school was a long time ago. There is joy here in watching the unfolding of these intricate and beautiful techniques. Casti's gift is to be able to let the nonmathematical reader share in his understanding of the beauty of a good theory."—Christian Science Monitor

"[Five Golden Rules] ranges into exotic fields such as game theory (which played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis) and topology (which explains how to turn a doughnut into a coffee cup, or vice versa). If you'd like to have fun while giving your brain a first-class workout, then check this book out."—San Francisco Examiner

"Unlike many popularizations, [this book] is more than a tour d'horizon: it has the power to change the way you think. Merely knowing about the existence of some of these golden rules may spark new, interesting—maybe even revolutionary—ideas in your mind. And what more could you ask from a book?"—New Scientist

"This book has meat! It is solid fare, food for thought . . . makes math less forbidding, and much more interesting."—Ben Bova, The Hartford Courant

"This book turns math into beauty."—Colorado Daily

"John Casti is one of the great science writers of the 1990s."—San Francisco Examiner

In the ever-changing world of science, new instruments often lead to momentous discoveries that dramatically transform our understanding. Today, with the aid of a bold new instrument, scientists are embarking on a scientific revolution as profound as that inspired by Galileo's telescope. Out of the bits and bytes of computer memory, researchers are fashioning silicon surrogates of the real world—elaborate "artificial worlds"—that allow them to perform experiments that are too impractical, too costly, or, in some cases, too dangerous to do "in the flesh."

From simulated tests of new drugs to models of the birth of planetary systems and galaxies to computerized petri dishes growing digital life forms, these laboratories of the future are the essential tools of a controversial new scientific method. This new method is founded not on direct observation and experiment but on the mapping of the universe from real space into cyberspace. There is a whole new science happening here—the science of simulation.

The most exciting territory being mapped by artificial worlds is the exotic new frontier of "complex, adaptive systems." These systems involve living "agents" that continuously change their behavior in ways that make prediction and measurement by the old rules of science impossible—from environmental ecosystems to the system of a marketplace economy. Their exploration represents the horizon for discovery in the twenty-first century, and simulated worlds are charting the course.

In Would-Be Worlds, acclaimed author John Casti takes readers on a fascinating excursion through a number of remarkable silicon microworlds and shows us how they are being used to formulate important new theories and to solve a host of practical problems. We visit Tierra, a "computerized terrarium" in which artificial life forms known as biomorphs grow and mutate, revealing new insights into natural selection and evolution. We play a game of Balance of Power, a simulation of the complex forces shaping geopolitics. And we take a drive through TRANSIMS, a model of the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to discover the root causes of events like traffic jams and accidents.

Along the way, Casti probes the answers to a host of profound questions these "would-be worlds" raise about the new science of simulation. If we can create worlds inside our computers at will, how real can we say they are? Will they unlock the most intractable secrets of our universe? Or will they reveal instead only the laws of an alternate reality? How "real" do these models need to be? And how real can they be? The answers to these questions are likely to change the face of scientific research forever.

About this title

About the Author

JOHN L. CASTI is a member of the faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and a professor at the Technical University of Vienna. He is the author of Paradigms Lost, Searching for Certainty, Complexification, and Five Golden Rules (Wiley). He divides his time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Vienna.

"Five Golden Rules is caviar for the inquiring reader. Anyone who enjoyed solving math problems in high school will be able to follow the author's explanations, even if high school was a long time ago. There is joy here in watching the unfolding of these intricate and beautiful techniques. Casti's gift is to be able to let the nonmathematical reader share in his understanding of the beauty of a good theory."--Christian Science Monitor

"[Five Golden Rules] ranges into exotic fields such as game theory (which played a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis) and topology (which explains how to turn a doughnut into a coffee cup, or vice versa). If you'd like to have fun while giving your brain a first-class workout, then check this book out."--San Francisco Examiner

"Unlike many popularizations, [this book] is more than a tour d'horizon: it has the power to change the way you think. Merely knowing about the existence of some of these golden rules may spark new, interesting--maybe even revolutionary--ideas in your mind. And what more could you ask from a book?"--New Scientist

"This book has meat! It is solid fare, food for thought . . . makes math less forbidding, and much more interesting."--Ben Bova, The Hartford Courant

"This book turns math into beauty."--Colorado Daily

"John Casti is one of the great science writers of the 1990s."--San Francisco Examiner

In the ever-changing world of science, new instruments often lead to momentous discoveries that dramatically transform our understanding. Today, with the aid of a bold new instrument, scientists are embarking on a scientific revolution as profound as that inspired by Galileo's telescope. Out of the bits and bytes of computer memory, researchers are fashioning silicon surrogates of the real world--elaborate "artificial worlds"--that allow them to perform experiments that are too impractical, too costly, or, in some cases, too dangerous to do "in the flesh."

From simulated tests of new drugs to models of the birth of planetary systems and galaxies to computerized petri dishes growing digital life forms, these laboratories of the future are the essential tools of a controversial new scientific method. This new method is founded not on direct observation and experiment but on the mapping of the universe from real space into cyberspace. There is a whole new science happening here--the science of simulation.

The most exciting territory being mapped by artificial worlds is the exotic new frontier of "complex, adaptive systems." These systems involve living "agents" that continuously change their behavior in ways that make prediction and measurement by the old rules of science impossible--from environmental ecosystems to the system of a marketplace economy. Their exploration represents the horizon for discovery in the twenty-first century, and simulated worlds are charting the course.

In Would-Be Worlds, acclaimed author John Casti takes readers on a fascinating excursion through a number of remarkable silicon microworlds and shows us how they are being used to formulate important new theories and to solve a host of practical problems. We visit Tierra, a "computerized terrarium" in which artificial life forms known as biomorphs grow and mutate, revealing new insights into natural selection and evolution. We play a game of Balance of Power, a simulation of the complex forces shaping geopolitics. And we take a drive through TRANSIMS, a model of the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to discover the root causes of events like traffic jams and accidents.

Along the way, Casti probes the answers to a host of profound questions these "would-be worlds" raise about the new science of simulation. If we can create worlds inside our computers at will, how real can we say they are? Will they unlock the most intractable secrets of our universe? Or will they reveal instead only the laws of an alternate reality? How "real" do these models need to be? And how real can they be? The answers to these questions are likely to change the face of scientific research forever.

Reviews

Computer simulation has arrived big time, in everything from movie effects to election forecasts; here's an expert's overview. Beginning with an attempt to predict the outcome of a Super Bowl, Casti (Searching for Certainty, 1991) chose a popular but fairly sophisticated computer game program to play a series of simulated games between the 1995 opponents, the 49ers and Chargers. He uses his results (which suggest either that the actual game was a fluke or that the program is flawed) to make several basic points about computer simulations and models. They can be predictive or explanatory; perfect fidelity to the real world is not the sole virtue; and they are often most useful in analysis of complex phenomena that in the real world are either dangerous to meddle with (such as the flight patterns over a busy airport) or very rare (the collision of a meteor with Earth). He then gets down to specifics, describing programs to analyze language, to generate artificial ``life,'' or to forecast the weather. A long and fascinating chapter is devoted to limitations and paradoxes that limit our ability to turn every problem into an easily computable simulation. We get close-up looks at a system modeling the traffic patterns at rush hour in Albuquerque; at neural nets, which attempt to simulate the structure of the human brain; and at ``Sugarscape,'' which extracts basic economic principles from a pure supply-and-demand environment. Casti's subject sometimes leads him into esoteric territory, but he tries to keep it down-to-earth with examples from real life. At the same time, he is not afraid to plunge into such deep waters as G”del's Incompleteness Theorem. There is the occasional mathematical formula, but readers without advanced math should be able to follow the argument--especially because of the excellent use of illustrations and diagrams. A very solid and useful discussion of the theory and practice of computer modeling in the physical and social sciences. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471123080
• ISBN 13: 9780471123088
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264