adaptation

psychology

Also known as: adaptability

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basis of intelligence

In human intelligence
…psychologists have generally agreed that adaptation to the environment is the key to understanding both what intelligence is and what it does. Such adaptation may occur in a variety of settings: a student in school learns the material he needs to know in order to do well in a course;…
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memory and forgetting

In memory: The significance of forgetting
Although the adaptive value of forgetting may not be obvious, dramatic instances of sudden forgetting (as in amnesia) can be seen to be adaptive. In this sense, the ability to forget can be interpreted as having been naturally selected in animals. Indeed, when one’s memory of an…
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relation to study of international relations

In international relations: Structures, institutions, and levels of analysis
…apparent, however, only because such adaptation can be viewed as reinforcing the neorealist thesis that institutions reflect the existing international structure: when that structure changes, they must change accordingly if they are to survive. Thus, NATO was able to survive because it underwent a transformation. At the same time, NATO’s…
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theories of perception

In perception: Context effects
…in a more recently developed adaptation-level theory, which also provides a general perceptual model. At the core of the model is the notion that the manner in which a stimulus is perceived depends not only on its own physical characteristics but also on those of surrounding stimuli and of stimuli…
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In perception: Information discrepancy
Similarly adaptation to the perceptual aftereffects rapidly occurs after the prism is removed in such experiments.
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work of Holland

In John Henry Holland
…emergence and individual and organizational adaptation. For example, beginning about 1977, Holland developed an artificial market based on a few simple rules and with competing “agents.” In addition to developing a system of payments and rewards for his agents, he “bred” them by creating the first genetic algorithms—essentially enabling his…
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John Henry Holland

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John Henry Holland

American mathematician

Written by Michael Aaron Dennis

Fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Article History

Quick Facts

Born:: February 2, 1929, Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.

Died:: August 9, 2015, Ann Arbor, Michigan (aged 86)

Subjects Of Study:: adaptation; complexity; emergence

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John Henry Holland (born February 2, 1929, Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.—died August 9, 2015, Ann Arbor, Michigan) was one of the pioneering theorists in nonlinear mathematics and the use of new mathematical techniques in understanding problems in disciplines as diverse as economics, biology, and computer science.

In 1950 Holland received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then entered the graduate school in communication science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received a master’s degree in mathematics in 1954 and what was arguably the first Ph.D. in computer science, in 1959. He remained at Michigan and played an active role in the development of computer science as a department and discipline. He played a fundamental role in creating Michigan’s Center for the Study of Complex Systems, and in 1988 he became a professor of psychology as well. Outside of his Michigan activities, Holland became an active member of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, a novel research institution established in 1984 to further the study of nonlinear phenomena.

Holland made his career through the study of nonlinear, or complex, systems. Unlike a linear system, which can be broken into simpler subsystems, studied, and reassembled to predict the full system’s behaviour, a nonlinear system displays behaviour that is inexplicable in terms of any of its separate subsystems. This nonlinear phenomenon is known as emergence, and Holland was among the first to realize the connection between emergence and individual and organizational adaptation. For example, beginning about 1977, Holland developed an artificial market based on a few simple rules and with competing “agents.” In addition to developing a system of payments and rewards for his agents, he “bred” them by creating the first genetic algorithms—essentially enabling his system of agents to evolve and learn from experience in a manner analogous to living systems. Holland’s views on emergence emphasized the dynamic character of complex systems and the ways such systems change over time.

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Numbers and Mathematics

Holland’s work is at one with other research in artificial intelligence and artificial life that emphasizes how lower-order activities are the building blocks out of which higher-level phenomena emerge. Just as the robotic pioneer Rodney Brooks argued that intelligence is not the result of a mind following internal rules and representations but the result of interaction with a particular environment, Holland argued that complex social and physical systems are not the product of abstract rules but the consequence of diverse agents and their interactions.

Among Holland’s published works are Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (1975), Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), and Emergence: From Chaos to Order (1998). The latter two were written for the lay reader.

Michael Aaron Dennis