This book is an outcome of the workshop on Emerging Syntheses in Science in 1984 in New Mexico. It describes the concept of the Institute and aspects of emerging syntheses which might prove relevant to the future development of the Institute and some initial steps taken to create the Institute.

"Foreword -- The Concept of the Institute 1 -- Spin Glass Hamiltonians: A Bridge Between Biology, Statistical Mechanics and Computer Science -- Macromolecular Evolution: Dynamical Ordering in Sequence Space -- Evolutionary Theory of Genotypes and Phenotypes: Towards a Mathematical Synthesis 1 -- Prospects for a Synthesis in the Human Behavioral Sciences -- The Emergence of Evolutionary Psychology -- War in Evolutionary Perspective -- The Relationship of Modern Archeology to Other Disciplines -- Reconstructing the Past through Chemistry -- The Conscious and Unconscious Stream of Thought -- Emerging Syntheses in Science: Conscious and Unconscious Processes -- Brain Mechanisms Underlying Visual Hallucinations -- Solitons in Biological Molecules 1 -- The New Biology and its Human Implications -- Biomolecules -- Computing With Attractors: From Self-repairing Computers, to Ultradiffusion, and the Application of Dynamical Systems to Human Behavior -- Fundamental Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy -- Complex Systems Theory
1 -- Mathematics and the Sciences -- Applications of Mathematics to Theoretical Computer Science -- Linguistics and Computing -- Dissipation, Information, Computational Complexity and the Definition of Organization -- Plans for the Future"