6 days agoThe Babel AlgorithmA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. In his 1901 essay, “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians,” Bertrand Russell suggests that George Boole, the autodidactic son of a cobbler, was the discoverer of pure mathematics in his work, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854)…3 min read3 min read
Oct 20, 2022Agents Against the SystemA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Jean-Luc Godard 1930–2022 Javier Marías 1951–2022 In the opening scene of Jean-Luc Godard’s absurd and irresistible science-fiction film “Alphaville,” the computer Alpha-60, an omniscient and omnipotent artificially intelligent overlord, declares, “Sometimes reality can be too complex to…3 min read3 min read
Jul 28, 2022Precision and SoulA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul. — Robert Musil The near-infinite question of how best to describe the world has yielded a relatively…3 min read3 min read
Apr 19, 2022Emergent Political Economies and a Science of PossibilityA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. “All actions, and all things indeed, are good or bad by relation only. …4 min read4 min read
Jan 27, 2022UNIQUENESS & UNIVERSALITYA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. One might say that natural history captures the uniqueness of every organism and natural science, their generality. Natural science values parsimony and natural history, profusion. But when is it appropriate to pick one approach over the other…4 min read4 min read
Nov 1, 2021The End of NarrativeA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Originally published in October 2021. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama wrote a long book with a mystifying title: “The End of History and the Last Man.” Even before reading the book, the title presented itself as a contradiction…4 min read4 min read
Jul 21, 2021Discovering Knowledge Junctions TogetherA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Originally published July 20, 2021. In 1860, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in The Conduct of Life, part one, on Fate, “How shall I live? We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge…Evolution4 min readEvolution4 min read
May 18, 2021Fractal Organizations and Fractal FacultyA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Originally published May 4, 2021. By all accounts Plato was a zealot for geometry. In The Republic he wrote: “We must order in the strongest possible terms that the men of your Ideal City shall in no…Organization3 min readOrganization3 min read
Jan 25, 2021Existential Games in QuarantineA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Originally published January 19, 2021. This year more than a few of us sought solace in the labyrinth of the game board. This is hardly a novel retreat or original compensation for reality. Vladimir Nabokov (who analyzed…Complexity3 min readComplexity3 min read
Nov 17, 2020Mountains, Monasteries, and the MetropolisA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Originally published January 19, 2018. “Because it’s there.” — George Mallory “Monasteries, those scattered danger points, become the chief objectives of nocturnal flight.” — Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time to Keep Silence “Even in Kyoto, longing for…Complexity3 min readComplexity3 min read
