Emergence: From Chaos to Order

In this important book, John H. Holland dramatically shows us that the "emergence" of order from disorder has much to teach us about life, mind and organizations. Creative activities in both the arts and the sciences depend upon an ability to model the world. The most creative of those models exhibits emergent properties, so that "what comes out is more than what goes in." From the ingenious checkers-playing computer that started beating its creator in game after game, to the emotive creations of the poet, Emergence shows that Holland's theory successfully predicts many complex behaviors in art and science.


About the Author
John H. Holland holds joint appointments in the Electrical Engineering and Psychology Departments of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is known worldwide as the "father of genetic algorithms" and as one of the deans of "complexity studies" at the Santa Fe Institute. He is the author of the groundbreaking book Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (also from Perseus Books).