This project will bring together investigators in the physical, biological, and social sciences, and parts of the humanities to conduct interdisciplinary research on a variety of non-adaptive and adaptive complex systems which share common conceptual features, but are traditionally studied separately within separate disciplines. Major tasks include discrimi- nating choice of initial problems and participants; control of disciplinary quality in interdisciplinary areas; integrative review to define the paradigms common to all of the seemingly disparate subjects chosen; a publication program to make results readily available to workers in a broad spectrum of traditional disciplines; and development of procedures designed to nurture research across disciplines. In initial operations, the Center will place principal emphasis on workshops, extended research programs, and ongoing research networks. Illustrative fields that may be involved are evolu- tionary biology, economics as an adaptive, nonlinear system, fluid dynamics, protein dynamics, polymers, and public policy. By facilitating applications of techniques from diverse disciplines that deal with complex systems to other such disciplines, this project could result in more rapid progress in some areas than would be accomplished by disciplinary specialists concentrating on the "traditional" methods of their fields. While the extent to which this approach will succeed is certainly not clear, and the extent to which future advances in the disciplines addressed will be identifiable as stemming from this project is in doubt, the potential "payoff" to individual disciplines of even a limited number of successes is very large.
