Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems (Mit Press) - Softcover

Holland, John H. H

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262525933 ISBN 13: 9780262525930

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2014

Synopsis

An overarching framework for comparing and steering complex adaptive systems is developed through understanding the mechanisms that generate their intricate signal/boundary hierarchies.

Complex adaptive systems (cas), including ecosystems, governments, biological cells, and markets, are characterized by intricate hierarchical arrangements of boundaries and signals. In ecosystems, for example, niches act as semi-permeable boundaries, and smells and visual patterns serve as signals; governments have departmental hierarchies with memoranda acting as signals; and so it is with other cas. Despite a wealth of data and descriptions concerning different cas, there remain many unanswered questions about "steering" these systems. In Signals and Boundaries, John Holland argues that understanding the origin of the intricate signal/border hierarchies of these systems is the key to answering such questions. He develops an overarching framework for comparing and steering cas through the mechanisms that generate their signal/boundary hierarchies.

Holland lays out a path for developing the framework that emphasizes agents, niches, theory, and mathematical models. He discusses, among other topics, theory construction; signal-processing agents; networks as representations of signal/boundary interaction; adaptation; recombination and reproduction; the use of tagged urn models (adapted from elementary probability theory) to represent boundary hierarchies; finitely generated systems as a way to tie the models examined into a single framework; the framework itself, illustrated by a simple finitely generated version of the development of a multi-celled organism; and Markov processes.

About this title

About the Author

John H. Holland is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan; he is also Trustee and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is the author of Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity and other books.

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262525933
• ISBN 13: 9780262525930
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 317