Art and Complexity

Eleven scientists and artists answer the question, how can "complexity" be utilized to find the common ground between their two so very different worlds?. Since the beginnings of the scientific mode of thinking in the 16th century, science and art have appeared as polar opposites: science with its cold logic and art with its transcendent beauty. Yet both scientists and artists are seekers after truth. In the spring of 1998, a small group of scientists and artists joined veteran scientist-author John L. Casti in a tiny Swedish village, far north of the Arctic circle, to examine the great promise that the emerging science of complexity holds for uniting these two ancient, disparate ways of thought. From Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann's ruminations on "Regularities and Randomness" to artist Gail Wright's forthright "Thought Sweat," these eleven essays take us deep into the minds of some of the most creative people on earth and offer insights into the exciting possibility of the fusion of art and science.