TABLE OF CONTENTS As we deepen our understanding of how the mental world of meaning is materially supported and represented, an understanding coming from the neurosciences, the cognitive sciences, computer science, biology, mathematics, and anthropology there will result a new synthesis of science, and a new worldview will arise. I am convinced that the nations and people who master the new sciences of complexity will become the economic, cultural and political superpowers of the next century.
Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason (1988)
This book summarizes the results of a multiyear research program, conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), [*] and sponsored in part by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), whose basic charter was to use complex adaptive systems theory to develop tools to help understand the fundamental processes of war. The chapters of this book are mostly self-contained, so that they may be read in any order, and are roughly divided into two parts. [ ] Part one (including this chapter and chapters 2 and 3) introduces the general context for the ensuing discussion, and provides both qualitative and more technical overviews of those elements of nonlinear dynamics, artificial-life, complexity theory and multiagent-based simulation tools that are applied to modeling combat in the second part of the book. Part two consists of a detailed source-code-level discussion of a multiagent-based model of combat called EINSTein, including its design, development, and sample behaviors. The final chapter summarizes the main ideas introduced throughout the book...
