R Wrangham. The goodness paradox: How evolution made us both more and less violent. London, England: Profile Books, 2019, 400 pp., ISBN: 9781781255834 (hbk), £25.

In comparison to other species, humans are both surprisingly peaceful in their day-to-day interactions with unrelated conspecifics and unprecedently violent toward them when the situation requires it. A goodness paradox, as Wrangham (2019) dubs this strange relationship of humankind to violence, is the theme of his latest book attempting to comprise decades of research into a coherent theory of aggressive behavior focused on humans. Drawing on his expertise in primatology, Wrangham presents an evolutionary theory that not only expands contemporary thinking about human behavior but also challenges and refines several crucial notions of human evolution.

 

Self-domesticated by violence to be peaceful. And violent
Dan Řezníček

Adaptive Behavior

Source: journals.sagepub.com

Human Current, the complexity podcast, emerged from the belief that the world will be a better place if more people learn about complexity—as a scientific theory and way of understanding the world. Our Human Current is a story of listening and learning, and of the power of mentorship, inspired by our own mentor, Douglas Drane.

We conducted more than 125 thoughtful interviews with scientists, influencers, and practitioners in the fields of complexity science and systems thinking. Let us take you on a 365-day journey through the stories, research, anecdotes, and advice from Doug and our conversations with guests including: Stephen Wolfram, a founding father of complexity science; Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute; Jean Boulton, co-author of Embracing Complexity; Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute; Margaret Wheatley, best-selling author; Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences; Albert-László Barabási, author; and so many more!

 

Our Human Current: Stories about Complexity, Systems, and Mentorship
By Angela Cross & Haley Campbell-Gross

Source: www.lulu.com

This thesis summarises my scientific contributions in the domain of network science, human dynamics and computational social science. These contributions are associated to computer science, physics, statistics, and applied mathematics. The goal of this thesis is twofold, on one hand to write a concise summary of my most interesting scientific contributions, and on the other hand to provide an up-to-date view and perspective about my field. I start my dissertation with an introduction to position the reader on the landscape of my field and to put in perspective my contributions. In the second chapter I concentrate on my works on bursty human dynamics, addressing heterogeneous temporal characters of human actions and interactions. Next, I discuss my contributions to the field of temporal networks and give a synthesises of my works on various methods of the representation, characterisation, and modelling of time-varying structures. Finally, I discuss my works on the data-driven observations and modelling of collective social phenomena. There, I summarise studies on the static observations of emergent patterns of socioeconomic inequalities and their correlations with social-communication networks, and with linguistic patterns. I also discuss dynamic observations and modelling of social contagion processes.

 

Computational Human Dynamics
Márton Karsai

Source: arxiv.org

This volume presents the proceedings of ALife 2019, the 2019 Conference on Artificial Life. Open Access

Source: www.mitpressjournals.org

The 2007–2008 financial crisis exposed the shortcomings of mainstream economic theory with economists unprepared to deal with it. In the face of this, a major rethinking of economics seems necessary and in presenting alternative approaches to economic theory, this book contributes to the rebuilding of the discipline.

This volume brings together contributions from different perspectives and theoretical approaches that address the challenge of updating the economic theory corpus and seek to recover prestige for this discipline after the failure of neoclassical economics. It addresses a range of topics, including the complexity approach to economics, category theory, the Post-Keynesian approach to micro and macroeconomics, financialisation, multidimensional analysis and ecological economics.

The book is aimed at economics scholars, researchers, academics and practitioners, as well as upper undergraduates and graduates in this area of knowledge. It may also be of interest for people interested in methodological issues in economics and the relationship between economic theory and the real world.

 

Alternative Approaches to Economic Theory:
Complexity, Post Keynesian and Ecological Economics
Edited By Victor A. Beker

Source: www.taylorfrancis.com