viii Foreword
from simple principles. This is really no surprise as many of the attendees at GPTP
have been students or colleagues of John’s. I believe that this world view is also
the reason for the longevity of the workshop as its focus is not about this or that
technique per se but is about the deeper workings of GP and how to manage it in the
application to different problems.
At the memorial held for John at the University of Michigan in October of this
year, Stephanie Forrest spoke about what it was like to be John’s graduate student,
and she described his approach to advising as being the practice of “benign neglect.”
As a student, she often found this difficult but said she had come to appreciate its
virtues and had adopted it with her own students.
I believe that GPTP has benefited from the same quality of benign neglect as
CSCS has given us time, space, and support to pursue a complex but fascinating
subject for over a decade without bothering about how the workshop was structured,
who we invited or how, or even if we published the results. This freedom has become
one of the hallmarks of GPTP, and every year, the participants comment on how
much they enjoy the workshop as a result.
For more on John’s amazing career, the reader is encouraged to read the
Santa Fe Institute’s obituary athttp://www.santafe.edu/news/item/in-memoriam-
john-holland/and, more importantly, to read his numerous, seminal papers and
books as he was truly one of the leading founders of our discipline.
Ann Arbor, MI, USA W.P. Worzel
November 2015