"Introduction to Complexity" by Melanie Mitchell from Santa Fe Institute.

https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/185-introduction-...

This free course is based on her book "Complexity: A Guided Tour"

https://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitche...

Crutchfield has recorded lectures on YouTube. I thought they were quite good. I'm biased toward learning statistical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics as a starting point. Search "phy 256 a(b) crutchfield" on YouTube. Crutchfield has been doing amazing work for quite some time. If you want a critical and very entertaining read, I would check out cosma shalizi's blog. He does a lot of book reviews too that may be helpful. http://bactra.org/weblog/

Other names/references include "The nature of computation" Stuart kauffman. "Nonlinear dynamics and chaos"

Too many stat mech books to possibly recommend, for the idea of emergence you'll want something including phase transitions so... Can't go wrong with 'thermodynamics and an introduction to thermostatistics". And for stat mech with lots of complex systems diversions, Sethna's book is excellent but difficult to learn from. "Entropy, complexity, and order parameters. Names in thermo/complexity: Sethna Goldenfeld Parisi HE stanley

Finally, it's hard to talk about complex systems without talking about networks, "Networks"-Newman is unambiguously the best choice. Names in networks: Mark Newman Reka Albert Avoid barabasi especially more recent stuff.

There may be better lectures/resources out there I don't know of, but I would start with crutchields lectures. Note again I am coming from heavy physics bias.

Personally I would read a book on statistical physics instead, since this is where the study of 'emergence' began. The Feynman lectures would be good for this.

I actually haven't found many good books for 'Complex systems', but if you want to take a shot anyway, I would look at https://academic.oup.com/book/25504 and https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691122045/cr...

Complexity and Criticality by Christensen and Moloney [0]. It goes through three main systems, percolation, the Ising model and the rice pile model. It's an introduction that gives the tools to analyze each and provides the foundation to understand other models and other literature in the area.

I found it pretty accessible from a programmers point of view.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/COMPLEXITY-CRITICALITY-Imperial-Colle...

Prerequisites are heavily aligned with physics / applied math, particularly: thermodynamics, dynamical systems, network theory, and a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary study. All should be approached from a perspective rooted mostly in rigorous information theory.

Kind of tangentially related but I think pretty relevant is Scale by Geoffreys West

My wife (Cynthia F. Kurtz) wrote a non-mathematical book on complexity a couple years ago: "Confluence: Tools for Thinking about How Organized Plans and Self-organized Patterns Flow Together" https://www.cfkurtz.com/confluence/

The blurb: "A path winds its way through a forest. Why does it go the way it goes? Did someone design it? Or was the path made smooth by feet that chose the smoothest path? Maybe some of both? Confluence examines the many ways in which organized, intentional plans (like paths we design) and self-organized, unintentional patterns (like paths that emerge where we walk) intermingle (happen at the same time and place) and interact (influence each other). The book lays out seven “thinking spaces” (like this one) that explore various aspects of the structures and relationships that flow together in our lives."

Anything by John H. Holland is good.

I can't recommend books but here are a couple of other good phrases to search with, or just to discuss with one of the sparkier LLMs, which tend to find this topic quite interesting:

1. cross-scale interaction

2. downward causation

Would be happy to learn of other terms too.