Overview

The book offers an exciting, non-technical intellectual journey around applying feedback control to emerging and managing local and global crises, thus keeping the world on a sustainable trajectory. There is a narrow border between destruction and prosperity: to ensure reasonable growth but avoid existential risk, we must find the fine-tuned balance between positive and negative feedback.  This book addresses readers belonging to various generations, such as: young people growing up in a world where everything seems to be falling apart; people in their 30s and 40s who are thinking about how to live a fulfilling life;  readers in their 50s and 60s thinking back on life; and Baby Boomers reflecting on their past successes and failures. Albert-László Barabási, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science, Northeastern University: “In a world where interconnectedness has fostered global prosperity, it has also introduced vulnerabilities that can escalate local failures into worldwide crises. “Feedback” by Peter Erdi explores this double-edged sword, offering a solution through the power of feedback mechanisms. These tools are designed to mitigate the negative impacts of connectedness, steering the complexity of modern life towards outcomes that enhance human welfare.” Patrick Grim, Philosopher in Residence Visiting Scholar Center for Complex Systems University of Michigan: “Érdi demonstrates that many of the critical problems we face—from climate crises to economic instability to the threat of terrorism—operate as runaway feedback loops. The first challenge is to understand them.  The second is to introduce control mechanisms on the model of biological homeostasis—a different form of feedback—that will guide us toward a more sustainable social future.  Érdi applies the analytic tools of complex systems to some of the most complex issues we face.” Ichiro Tsuda, Specially Appointed Professor at Sapporo City University, Sapporo, Japan, leaving Chubu University Academy of Emerging Sciences (Director and Professor), Chubu University, Japan: “This book is dangerous, because of making your own consideration on feedback impossible to stop by a continual feedback process of yourself. Nevertheless, you must be given a method of finding very narrow boundaries between prosperity and destruction, therefore this book is extremely valuable. We all must read.”    

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9783031624384

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Reviews

“Érdi declares two objectives for writing this book: the concern for the future of the world, and his interest in cybernetics, as a general, pluralistic approach to feedback systems of all kinds. These two objectives are visible throughout the book, and the Reader should have this in mind when reading it. It is also a reason why this book is written in a personal style, where the author’s thoughts and worries are mixed with scientific and historical facts.” (Hans Liljenström, BioSystems, Vol. 247 (1), January, 2025)

“Each chapter is written in the style of a journal article … . the content of this book is quite interesting and also important for our understanding of how nonlinear, complex systems work, i.e. how most natural and artificial systems are able to maintain some kind of stability with the help of feedback control. … I can really recommend this book, primarily to students and others interested in a comprehensive introduction/overview to feedback in natural and artificial systems.” (Hans Liljenström, BioSystems, Vol. 247, January, 2025) 

Author Information

Péter Érdi, born in Budapest, is a senior computational scientist appointed as Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, since 2002. There, he teaches interdisciplinary classes in physics, psychology, computer science, and mathematics. He is also a research professor at the Department of Computational Sciences, HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Budapest, Hungary. Member of the Board of Governors of the International Neural Network Society (2012-2020), and Vice President of Membership of the Same Society in 2017-2018, in 2015-2019, Péter was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal “Cognitive Systems Research”, published by Elsevier. Editorial Board Member of the Journal BioSystems (Elsevier), and of the Springer book series “Springer Series in Synergetics” and “Understanding Complex Systems”, he has hold about 200 invited lectures in the overlapping areas of computational, cognitive, and social sciences, in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. He is also the founding director of the Budapest Semester in Cognitive Science, a study abroad program established in 2003, which takes international students to Budapest for one semester. Author of some reputable and well-known books, such as Complexity Explained (Springer, 2008) and Stochastic Chemical Kinetics - Theory and (Mostly) Systems Biological Applications (with Gábor Lente, Springer, 2014), he recently published Ranking: The Unwritten Rules of the Social Game We All Play (Oxford University Press, 2020), which has been translated into Chinese, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Korean, and Repair: When and How to Improve Broken Objects, Ourselves, and Our Society (with Zsuzsa Szvetelszky, Springer, 2022).      

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