Matthew's review
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
by Steven Johnson
Matthew's review
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
Matthew's review
rating:
An introduction to the concept of emergence, which is becoming a trendy idea these days. Johnson gives an overview of some of the different experiments and fields which have lead to the creation of this idea, such as how mold spores and ant colonies work, as well as examples from city planning and computer science. Emergence relates to how bottom-up systems with simple rules creates high degrees of complexity through their interactions. I found the book a good source of some of the early case studies which lead to an interest in this approach. I was less convinced by some of the deeper metaphysical efforts and, at times, Johnson's explanations of why something was emergent and something else was not came across as muddled or arbitrary.
