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I fail to understand some of the more critical reviews of this book, so I wanted to defend it for what it has added to the complexity discussion over the last two decades and add a few points that have not been adequately highlighted in the reviews thus far.
While this book was originally published in 1995, few books on this topic have matched its clarity in explaining the relationship between adaptation and its effects on injecting complexity into systems. There are numerous biological analogies, yet the overall approach addresses the more general application of cas to include human systems at a level accessible to most readers.
Holland's seven basic principles of complex systems remain relevant today and establish important insights about how complexity evolves. These consist of both properties and mechanisms that reveal how interaction affects adaptation and emergence. Holland describes them as:
Aggregation (property)
Tagging (mechanism)
Nonlinearity (property)
Flows (property)
Diversity (property)
Internal Models (mechanism)
Building Blocks (mechanism)
These are introductory in nature and serve as conceptual ideas about the workings of complexity as well as the components for building models and simulation networks. A thorough understanding of these conceptual components is an important starting point for a broader understanding of complexity across a number of domains, including human organizations.
For those interested in modeling complex adaptive systems, Holland guides his readers though the basics of constructing models while identifying some of the key challenges and approaches to representing human behavior in cas models.
Since the book was published, there has been a growing interest in how intervention might be successfully achieved in complex networks. Holland touched on this topic by introducing "lever points" (p 5) and identifying "clusters of effectors" (p. 45) but never explored the possibility of purposely injecting change into networks.
My only mild annoyance with this book is its reliance on overly complex diagrams which are sometimes hard to follow and not particularly complementary to the text.
Overall, this book remains a significantly strong contribution even 18 years after its initial publication. Such enduring value speaks to its role in contemporary complexity scholarship.
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- Series: Helix Books
- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books (September 3, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0201442302
- ISBN-13: 978-0201442304
- Product Dimensions: 0.5 x 5.5 x 8.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 23 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#431,517 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #14311 in Science & Mathematics
- #135 in System Theory
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