John Henry Holland

I would like to talk a little bit about John Henry Holland. I first know him from my previous advisor, Prof. Chen, when I was a master at Renmin Univ. of China. Prof. Chen is the first Chinese scholar who visited the Santa Fe Institute and thereby introduced the complex system theory into China. In Santa Fe Institute Prof. Chen met Holland and then they became friends. Later then, Holland visited our Economics Science Lab in the School of Information.

John H. Holland is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is generally known as the father of genetic algorithms. Nevertheless, he is also the pioneer of complex system and nonlinear science.

Dr. Holland was born in 1929. He earned a B.A. in Physics in MIT and M.A. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

In his seminal book "Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems", Dr. Holland introduced the Genetic Algorithm. I have read two of his influential books: "Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity" and "Emergence: From Chaos to Order". These two books have fundamentally changed the perspectives as we see the world. Holland and his colleagues in Santa Fe Institute share a deep impatience with the kind of linear, reductionist thinking that has long dominated science since the Newton age. Instead, they are creating novel ideas about coevaltion, chaos, order and nonlinearity. This kind of ideas is demonstrating its vitality in understanding and illustrating universe, life and human social behavior.