Music is a universal language across time, peoples, and geographies, and also fundamental to our human experience, a result ...

SFI External Professors Alison Gopnik and Scott Page are among 120 new members of the National Academy of Sciences announced this week. Election to NAS recognizes the members’ “distinguished and ...

In a network, pairs of individual elements, or nodes, connect to each other; those connections can represent a sprawling system with myriad individual links. A hypergraph goes deeper: It gives ...

In many careers, a person must learn foundational skills before advancing more deeply into their profession. Computer programmers need a solid foundation in basic mathematics; nurses must gain ...

The oceans teem with photosynthesizing bacteria, tiny-tailed dinoflagellates gobbling other plankton, algae surrounded by intricate glass skeletons. In the 1960s, the ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson ...

Cultural traits — the information, beliefs, behaviors, customs, and practices that shape the character of a population — are influenced by conformity, the tendency to align with others, or ...

In fields ranging from immunology and ecology to economics and thermodynamics, multi-scale complex systems are ubiquitous. They are also notoriously difficult to model. Conventional approaches take ...

Originally published in Nautilus Magazine's "Reality" issue, September 2024. Republished with permission. I remember the day when, at the age of 7, I realized that I wanted to figure out how reality ...

We live in a complex world — one that is increasingly connected, evolving, technological, volatile, and potentially poised for catastrophe. And yet we continue to treat the world as if it were simple.

It’s become easier than ever before to engage with content online, particularly with features like infinite scrolling. However, the smooth user experience of social media apps encourages superficial ...

To SFI External Professor Han van der Maas, psychology is the most fascinating science of all. It’s also one he sees as facing multiple crises — crises of theory, replication, and measurement.

Researchers who study belief dynamics often use analogies to understand and model the complex cognitive–social systems that underly why we believe the things we do and how those beliefs can change ...