Complexity: A Very Short Introduction

John H. Holland

It came as a surprise when Oxford University Press approached me to write a Very Short Introduction  on complexity, and at first I was quite reluctant. I had just finished a book on complexity, aimed  at a science-oriented audience, and revisiting the topic so soon was not appealing.

Two properties of the VSI series changed my mind: The book was to be aimed at a much broader  audience—anyone, of whatever background, interested in complexity—and it was to be short. In  addition, my colleagues unstintingly praise the whole VSI series, touting the books as providing  easy, authoritative overviews to any topic in its long list. All in all, it was a challenge that  was both daunting and intriguing. I decided to see what I could do.

A bit to my surprise, the process of writing this book substantially increased my own  comprehension, even though I had been teaching courses on complexity, at various levels, for many  years. As the final chapter of this book began to take form, I saw that topics I had previously  taken to be well separated actually had much in common. Reducing the concepts to their simple  underpinnings served to ‘glue’ them together. I can only hope that you, the reader, feel the same.