| Hidden Order John Holland Excerpt from his book Hidden Order (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-40793-0) "In Hidden Order, John Holland prepares the reader for some of the most exciting science of the twenty-first century. The father of genetic algorithms and of Echo explains in a clear and entertaining manner important properties of composite complex adaptive systems, especially those based on computers. Along the way, he provides invaluable insights into economics, ecology, biological evolution, and thinking". --Murray Gell-Man With respect to Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), one of the larger objectives is to uncover general principles that will enable us to synthesise complex CAS behaviours from simple laws. Complex adaptive systems are quite different from most systems that have been studied scientifically. They exhibit coherence under change, via conditional action and anticipation, and they do so without central direction. At the same time, it would appear that CAS have lever points, wherein small amounts of input produce large, directed changes. It should be easier to discover these lever points if we can uncover general principles that govern CAS dynamics. Knowing more about lever points would, in turn, provide us with guidelines for effective approaches to CAS-based problems such as immune diseases, inner-city decay, industrial innovation, and the like. For problems this complex, it is unlikely that we will make substantial progress without theoretical guidelines. We are only at the beginning of the search for general principles, but we do have some hints as to what that those problems might be. I'll set down those hints, as I see them, in the concluding chapter. |
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updated 1995 |