Nov 8Mirrors of the WorldA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. Arthur I. Miller subtitled his parallel biography of Einstein and Picasso Space, Time, and the Beauty that Causes Havoc. The upheaval to which Miller alludes is nothing less than the assault on our intuitive beliefs about space…3 min read3 min read
Aug 23Between the Bauhaus and Bell LabsA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. The employees of Bell Telephone Laboratories described the company as an “institute for creative technology.” According to Jon Gertner, the historian of Bell Labs, “This description aimed to inform the world that the line between the art…3 min read3 min read
May 31Complexity as History and History as ComplexityA BEYOND BORDERS column by David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute. At a recent meeting at SFI, my colleagues Kyle Harper (history of Rome and pandemics) and David Wolpert (physics of information and computation) encouraged a small group of historians and complexity scientists to reflect on recent developments…4 min read4 min read
Jan 31The 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. Nothing is so complex as relations when considered with regard to a society, and nothing is so difficult as to discover truth, when involved…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
