SFI President Brings Anthropologist’s Perspective

Mathematical modelers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and other social scientists are gathered at NIMBioS this week for the Investigative Workshop on Modeling Social Complexity. The aim of the workshop, co-hosted by NIMBioS and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, is to work toward developing a formal theory for the evolution of human social complexity. This new science, known as Cliodynamics, uses a dynamical systems approach to studying history by combining mathematical models and analyses of quantitative data to explain the processes and mechanisms that influence history. This week’s gathering of international scholars looking mathematical modeling of social complexity is the first of its kind. One participant is Dr. Jeremy Sabloff, the president of Santa Fe Institute. We sat down with Dr. Sabloff, an anthropologist, to find out the value of mathematical approaches to scientific inquiry. Click here to view the video.