9d 84:9414.-te

MC/fteCa Vita ("6“-C4414-4,"

cc eGve 3&411/

Vett/ G

Arts & Entertainment

itielvdi
ealety Ae41:-

40-edt.

"r/ `C

G

The Magic Guppy

A new theory about how simple,
and complex, things really work.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

• • • • • • • • • •

• • • •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Clothing for women and children • Gifts and Accessories
•
39530 W 14 mile in the Hiller shopping center • Commerce 248-438-6136 • Open Monday-Saturday
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

248-540-7220

From the entire staff o

877 West Long Lake atTelegraph

lirrY

MaY 2p08

Me 4Z. Z N6L

MEDITERRANEAN

410

II 411 4111

( . "
: .1C

c niisizing

GRILLE

Mama

tialt a happy: At'a dil

(;(lifelii,

WWI 124(iSpe

C ?i!

11Cf('"

-Your friends at Mazza Grin

42050 GRAND RIVER RD.
NOVI, MICHIGAN
248.349.7770

4189 ORCHARD LAKE RD.
ORCHARD LAKE TWP., MICHIGAN
248.865.0000

HOURS OF OPERATION:

SUNDAY-THURSDAY 11AM-11PM I FRI & SATURDAY 11 AM-MIDNIGHT

B50

September 25 • 2008

iN

Sandee Brawarsky

Special to

A

S t MPLEXITY

the Jewish News

handshake might seem to be
a simple, even thoughtless,
social exchange. But behind
the meeting of hands are a lot of neu-
ral firings, tactile feedback, control of
muscles, depth perception; it's a ritual
that grows out of a long tradition of
greetings and social cues.
In his thought-provoking new book,
Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become
Complex (and How Complex Things
Can Be Made Simple) (Hyperion;
$25.95), Time magazine senior edi-
tor and writer Jeffrey Kluger refracts
perceptions of how the world works
— and how to make things better
— through the prism of complexity
science.
As he explains in an interview, peo-
ple tend to mistake size for complexity
and subtlety for simplicity, and often
miss seeing the extraordinary in the
ordinary.
He reports in part on the pioneering
work of the Santa Fe Institute, a think
tank and research center dedicated to the
study of complexity, led by Nobel Prize-
winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann.
Kluger's literary agent helped him to
coin the book's title, an apt new word
for the overlap and interface between
simplicity and complexity (they later
learned the name also has been used
by companies).
Simplexity joins a growing genre
of nonfiction books that bridge sci-
ence, psychology and economics to
look at the science of decision-making
— books that make economics sexy,
as a Time magazine correspondent has
said. Also dubbed chic-onomics, the
titles include Dan Ariely's Predictably
Irrational, Malcolm Gladwell's
The Tipping Point and Blink and
Stephen Dubner and Stephen Levitt's
Freakonomics.
The inspiration for Simplexity came
several years ago when the author was
staring at a fish tank in his apartment.
As he writes in the book's prologue,
"We grow hushed at, say, a star, and we
shrug at, say, a guppy. And why not?
A guppy is cheap, fungible, eminently

Why Simple Things

Become Complex

an d HOw

Complex Things

Can Be Mac S„ plc)

JEFFREY KLUGE

True intricacy more often lies in the
commonplace.

disposable, a barely conscious clump
of proteins that coalesce into a bigger
clump ..."
But for Kluger, a guppy is a "sym-
phony of systems — circulatory, skel-
etal, optical, neurological, hematologi-
cal, metabolic, auditory, respiratory,
olfactory, enzymatic, reproductive,
biomechanical, behavioral, social. Its
systems are assembled from cells; its
cells have subsystems; the subsystems
have subsystems:'
Similarly, as he explains, a house-
plant may be more complex than a
manufacturing plant.
Writing Simplexity changed the way
Kluger looks at just about everything.
Many of the chapters grew out of
issues he covered for Time, includ-
ing language acquisition, emergency
evacuation and health care.
He also writes here about the arts, the
stock market and the onset of wars. As a
writer, he's particularly skilled in making
complex ideas accessible.
Kluger explains that a generation
ago, chaos theory was a paradigm-
shifting hypothesis, about the power
of disorder. He believes that a new
understanding of how things that are
complex are actually simple and vice
versa is similarly causing a shift in sci-
entific thinking.
He quotes Chris Wood, a neurosci-
entist at the Santa Fe Institute, "Ask
me why I forgot my keys this morning,