The International Conference on Complex Systems provides a unique opportunity for scientists to rise above the disciplinary boundaries and explore unity in complex systems. This volume contains the proceedings of the Second International Conference on Complex Systems. The sessions ranged from the opening talk by Nobel laureate Philip Anderson on emergence and the relevance of complex systems to physics to the final panel that included many of the great management gurus of this generation. The plenary session topics for the second conference were emergence, description and modeling, self-organization, networks, time series, agents in action, and complexity and management. Talks in these sessions often focused on contributions in specific disciplines, but each session contained a diverse set of disciplines to show the strategies and concepts that can be applied generally to complex systems. Overall, the conference presentations dealt with issues of significant public interest, including individual psychology, dynamics of social and economic change, the human genome, and ecology.The New England Complex Systems Institute is an independent educational and research institution dedicated to advancing the study of complex systems, including new concepts and methodologies that are affecting all fields of science and engineering, and are being applied to technology, business, and even social policy. NECSI organizes conferences, workshops, short courses, and other activities from which books will be produced for the NECSI Series on Complexity. The books will range from conference proceedings and graduate textbooks to general-audience trade books, and will address fundamental concepts, new frontiers, and innovative applications of complex systems.

This fresh collection of essays questions how the historical process affects our conception of science, including our understanding of its validity as well as our general conception of knowledge. The essays in this book consider the philosophical labours spanning the work of Descartes, Kant and Hegel, still the philosophical basis of our modern understanding of science, as well as recent selected philosophers and historians of science such as Kuhn and Feyerbend. Themes raised include the philosophical basis for the validity of science, the possibility of ever knowing the independent world as it truly is, and the intelligibility of construing scientific knowledge as a historical. Taken separately and together, these essays provide a sustained analysis of scientific claims to objective standing, the historicity of thought and inquiry. They point toward unfinished philosophical business and the need for a new beginning.

First published in 1932, this book discusses the suspension of the gold standard in Britain, and the economic events surrounding September 1931. It argues that despite specific errors made by individuals, groups, and individual nations, the attempts to save the pound had little chance of recovery. Indeed, years before its collapse, powerful, fundamental factors had been eroding its stability. Hence, the author does not entirely blame the influence of French policy, or Great Britain's political and economic decline after the war, but states that the collapse of sterling was co-ordinated by several factors of importance.

In this book, the author reflects major stages in the principal history of oil from the beginning of World War II to 1981. He focuses on the significance of critical aspects of petroleum logistics and presents the strategic dimensions of oil.