Herb Simon's book, The Sciences of the Artificial, has instantly become one of the more indispensable books on my shelf. Even though I spent five years across the quad from a building with his name on it, I never really learned what he did or why his work was so important. So it is with a bit of embarrassment that I admit this book was an unexpected pleasure.
I stumbled across Simon's book as an accident. One of my students recommended we read Ethiraj and Levinthal's "Modularity and Innovation in Complex Systems" to inform our discussion about information sharing in support of infrastructure system emergency preparedness. One of their references to "The Architecture of Complexity" seemed interesting, and I wanted to learn more about system architecture so I could understand what one of my newest colleagues, David Broniatowski, was saying when he discussed the role of architecture in system flexibility and controllability. So I set out in search of "Architecture of Complexity," and the librarian instead pointed me to The Sciences of the Artificial. What a blessing!
I truly want you to read the book, so I won't say too much. For me, my most cherished insight from Simon was the following:
A man [An ant], viewed as a behaving system, is quite simple. The apparent complexity of his behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which he [it] finds himself [itself].
To me, the simplicity and elegance of this hypothesis characterizes the entire book. Although we may disagree on the specific mechanisms, or on the plausibility of this hypothesis, its influence on the practice of engineering and policy design cannot be doubted. I also see the practical results of exploration of this hypothesis everywhere I look in research and technical literature. This hypothesis and many other insights (e.g., satisficing, hierarchical organization of complex systems, valuing the search vs. valuing the outcome, etc.) immediately resonated with my experiences and pulled me all the way through the book.
Because I was trained as a civil engineer, it has taken a decade after my undergraduate to encounter Simon's work. I believe I can say that it has been worth the wait.