Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems

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.

• Author
• John H. Holland

• Format
• hardcover

• Pages
• 308

• Publisher
• MIT Press (MA)

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780262017831

• Genres
• science, evolution

• Release date
• 2012