Rating: 
Summary: Good
Review: A good book, giving a nice introduction to the subject. Gets a little mathematical in places, but the ideas seem to be spot on if you can look beyond the maths.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but it's no Hidden Order
Review: Having just read Holland's other book "Hidden Order", I was psyched to hear that he had written another book on the science of complex adaptive systems. This book, however, was quite disappointing. While the first few chapters were interesting, the second half of the book was a loss to me. There seemed to be too many divergent themes upon which he was trying to comment. I feel like he ran out of ideas and started just writing down anything that came to mind. The last chapter provided a good summary of the ideas he tried to express concerning emergence, but the book on the whole left more questions than it answered. If you really want to learn something about emergence and related science of complexity, check out his other book "Hidden Order". It's much better and a bit easier to understand in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: Holland does not have the gift of popularization
Review: Having just read Holland's other book "Hidden Order", I was psyched to hear that he had written another book on the science of complex adaptive systems. This book, however, was quite disappointing. While the first few chapters were interesting, the second half of the book was a loss to me. There seemed to be too many divergent themes upon which he was trying to comment. I feel like he ran out of ideas and started just writing down anything that came to mind. The last chapter provided a good summary of the ideas he tried to express concerning emergence, but the book on the whole left more questions than it answered. If you really want to learn something about emergence and related science of complexity, check out his other book "Hidden Order". It's much better and a bit easier to understand in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but it's no Hidden Order
Review: Having just read Holland's other book "Hidden Order", I was psyched to hear that he had written another book on the science of complex adaptive systems. This book, however, was quite disappointing. While the first few chapters were interesting, the second half of the book was a loss to me. There seemed to be too many divergent themes upon which he was trying to comment. I feel like he ran out of ideas and started just writing down anything that came to mind. The last chapter provided a good summary of the ideas he tried to express concerning emergence, but the book on the whole left more questions than it answered. If you really want to learn something about emergence and related science of complexity, check out his other book "Hidden Order". It's much better and a bit easier to understand in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: A contribution for the understanding of the complexity
Review: It is very important to the universal thinking the unsderstanding about complexity and its cognitive perception by humans. I read Dr. Holland's first book in London at 1993 and that time I follow his steps in order to reach a meaningfull knowledge to our lives and our existence in the universe. The title of the book is very difficult to develop but Dr. Holland has a special skill to clarify and transmmit the ideas breaking down our paradigm about the universe and the world and life complexity.
Rating:
Summary: More good ideas in 10 pages than most authors have at all.
Review: John H. Holland is known to complexity theorists and computer programmers as the creator of the "Genetic Algorithm", a method of modeling evolutionary systems on PCs.
Holland's book Emergence is an attempt at a mass-media audience; the book is well written and easy to understand, but the subject matter is daunting.
Great stuff if you like computer modeling of systems.
Rating:
Summary: More good ideas in 10 pages than most authors have at all.
Review: John H. Holland is known to complexity theorists and computer programmers as the creator of the "Genetic Algorithm", a method of modeling evolutionary systems on PCs.
Holland's book Emergence is an attempt at a mass-media audience; the book is well written and easy to understand, but the subject matter is daunting.
Great stuff if you like computer modeling of systems.
Rating:
Summary: Holland does not have the gift of popularization
Review: John Holland's "Emergence" just doesn't make it as a science popularization. The ideas Holland presents are fascinating, exciting, and indeed highly relevant for our globalized, interconnected world. Unfortunately, none of this comes across. Like many scientists (I know... I *am* a scientist), Holland simply has no idea how a nonscientist would grasp the concept of emergence. He overexplains simple examples like the numbers and board games of the first two chapters, then underexplains the deeper ideas of later chapters. The final chapter is pretty good in terms of unifying the book's themes and providing a broader view of how emergence fits into science and human culture. However, the reader has not been adequately prepared for this broadening because the middle chapters were so poorly explained. I fear that most readers will come away without sensing the truly revolutionary nature of this new branch of science. Holland lacks passion! The book is bland because Holland seems not to be able to present rigorous science in conjunction with thrill and emotion. He should take a lesson from the experts at popularization, such as Sagan and Gribbin, who succeed at presenting factually correct science in a way that engages and excites nonscientists.
Rating:
Summary: Holland does not have the gift of popularization
Review: John Holland's "Emergence" just doesn't make it as a science popularization. The ideas Holland presents are fascinating, exciting, and indeed highly relevant for our globalized, interconnected world. Unfortunately, none of this comes across. Like many scientists (I know... I *am* a scientist), Holland simply has no idea how a nonscientist would grasp the concept of emergence. He overexplains simple examples like the numbers and board games of the first two chapters, then underexplains the deeper ideas of later chapters. The final chapter is pretty good in terms of unifying the book's themes and providing a broader view of how emergence fits into science and human culture. However, the reader has not been adequately prepared for this broadening because the middle chapters were so poorly explained. I fear that most readers will come away without sensing the truly revolutionary nature of this new branch of science. Holland lacks passion! The book is bland because Holland seems not to be able to present rigorous science in conjunction with thrill and emotion. He should take a lesson from the experts at popularization, such as Sagan and Gribbin, who succeed at presenting factually correct science in a way that engages and excites nonscientists.
Rating:
Summary: Toss Up
Review: Parts of this book were interesting, but overall it was much ado about not much, and what was done was often overdone (I agree with another reviewer on this point). I see that Amazon has coupled this book with Hidden Order. I can't see why. It would be like buying the same book twice. Anyway, so much of this has been warmed over so many times now that it's frankly a bit dry. I'd like to see a book that really breaks new ground in complexity without overusing buzz words or talking down to me, holding my hand through simple things. Here, the topic is more attractive than the content I'm afraid. Anyone really interested in complexity and emergence will need to go into technical details well beyond this book. Others, like me, will likely find the details that are here to be a bit tedious.
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