Book Description
In the Origin of Wealth, Eric Beinhocker offers a thorough and convincing new way to think about economic growth and business management. The author begins by exploring the roots of modern economic theory and ultimately declares it outmoded and wrong. Instead, he suggests, markets and growth can best be explained by drawing on the emerging field of complexity economics: the study of markets and social systems as complex adaptive systems. Although biological metaphors in business have become familiar (i.e., organizations are living organisms), Beinhocker moves beyond metaphor to explain the revolutions in science that will inevitably change the way we think about economics, competition, and business. The Origin of Wealth raises important questions such as: How can one create strategy in uncertain and fast moving environments? Why is it hard for large organizations to be innovative and how should we organize for better results? What role should governments play in this new era?
Customer Reviews:
Modern Classic.......2007-09-25
I would classify Eric Beinhocker's book as an instant classic. Although it is more of a survey of broad spectrum of economic studies, it is extremely well put together and well written. I promised myself that this is a book that requires a more detailed review but since I have not had time to write that yet, I want to at least share the following with the would be readers of this book:
Buy this book! The primary focus of the book is analysis of how emergence (no pun intended) of complex dynamical systems is changing the fundamentals of economics. Book does an excellent job of giving historical account of how mathematical foundations of economics was developed and influenced by the math/physics of the time: math of systems in equilibrium. Afterwords it methodically studies the complex dynamical systems, their impact on agent based modeling of complex phenomenon and how this development in mathematical thinking is already impacting economics. Last couple of chapters also provide ponderings of complex dynamical systems analysis and its impact on policy making and international relations.
Book is clearly written, well researched with excellent bibliography and captures some of the most throught provoking research in the industry in a simple and conherent fashion.
If I get time I promise to write a longer and more deserving review of this book.
Eye-popping paradigm shift in economics unveiled.......2007-07-14
On the subject matter...
Ever wonder why macro-economics didn't make sense?
Want to know more about how economies and markets really work?
On the writing...
The author provides a simple, compelling narrative which debunks a large portion of economics as it has been taught for the last 200 years. It then goes on to synthesize broad swaths of recent economic research into a cohesive vision of economics as an evolutionary open system and that observable macro-economic patterns are largely a product of the evolutionary algorithm at work.
If a high level understanding of the workings of economies or markets is of interest to you -- or you just want to unlearn a lot of false theory -- The Origin of Wealth is for you!
Must have for anyone who gave up on economics... like me.......2007-07-02
If you ever tried to read a book on economics, you probably loved the classics (Adam Smith, Shumpeter, Keynes...) but then you probably had an uneasy feeling about people trying to use some kind of Maxwell equation to explain the workings of the economy. That's where you probably decided that this science was either too complex for you (in fact, it is the world that is too complex for traditional economics) or that scholars were probably more interested in masturbating their brains than truly explaining the world. That's usually where a science needs a paradigm shift in order to stay alive in the world, and not just in academia.
Hopefully, things have changed and economists are now introducing concepts that gracefully embrace the nature of the subject : evolution, non-linear functions, psychology, sociology, and intelligent mathematics (the one that tries to fit with the actual world, not the opposite)
This book is a must have... The kind of book that makes you feel intelligent not because it's full of obscure concepts that you think you can loosely fit together, but because it is fact-based, well written, sometimes surprising, and most of all it feels right... which is truly groundbreaking.
Just like in nuclear physics, this science finally takes off the very moment it stops trying to fit the world in an a+b=c equation. Instead of having a precisely wrong theory, we now have something that accounts for the inherent complexity of the economy and unveils new and fascinating territories for us to discover.
A must for economics students!.......2007-07-01
I am an undergraduate student of economics and was always critical about the Traditional Economics theories that were presented in class. I never just accepted the textbook's mathmatical models as the ultimate truth and always looked for more. I read books from a wide range of areas, all supporting my view that there was something more to our economic life than what professors told us in class, but never making a clear connection to economic theory. I bought this book by chance before a long flight and can't say how happy I was when I realized what Beinhocker was saying. I could not stop reading and finished it in about a week. Beinhocker showed me how to break through the mathmatical barriers of traditional economics and think about economics in an exiting and liberating new way. His introduction to Complexity Economics (as he calls it) has given me new hope for economics and enthusiasm for my studies. I am already diving deeper and deeper into work mentioned in the references and a whole new world is opening in front of me! A. J. Sutter makes many valid points in his lengthy review above. I still think Beinhocker managed to write a book that is groundbreaking in its range of topics covered and its comprehensive overview of Complexity Economics.
No student of economics who has not at least heard about the topics mentioned in this book can say that he knows the subject he is studying.
The back door stage behind traditional economics and the first acts of a paradigm change.......2007-06-27
Truly a wonderful book reommended for young and curious economists around the world. A profound insight into Economic analisys that will pop up a couple of "new" and hidden ideas!
Amazon.com
The best treatment I have yet encountered about how order emerges naturally -- and possibly even necessarily -- out of chaos. Profoundly important, and considerably more informed than better-known pop-science treatments of chaos theory. Very highly recommended.
Book Description
A major scientific revolution has begun, a new paradigm that rivals Darwin's theory in importance. At its heart is the discovery of the order that lies deep within the most complex of systems, from the origin of life, to the workings of giant corporations, to the rise and fall of great civilizations. And more than anyone else, this revolution is the work of one man, Stuart Kauffman, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kauffman brilliantly weaves together the excitement of intellectual discovery and a fertile mix of insights to give the general reader a fascinating look at this new science--and at the forces for order that lie at the edge of chaos. We all know of instances of spontaneous order in nature--an oil droplet in water forms a sphere, snowflakes have a six-fold symmetry. What we are only now discovering, Kauffman says, is that the range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed. Indeed, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. But how does this spontaneous order arise? Kauffman contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization, or what he calls "order for free," that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity--a living cell. Kauffman uses the analogy of a thousand buttons on a rug--join two buttons randomly with thread, then another two, and so on. At first, you have isolated pairs; later, small clusters; but suddenly at around the 500th repetition, a remarkable transformation occurs--much like the phase transition when water abruptly turns to ice--and the buttons link up in one giant network. Likewise, life may have originated when the mix of different molecules in the primordial soup passed a certain level of complexity and self-organized into living entities (if so, then life is not a highly improbable chance event, but almost inevitable). Kauffman uses the basic insight of "order for free" to illuminate a staggering range of phenomena. We see how a single-celled embryo can grow to a highly complex organism with over two hundred different cell types. We learn how the science of complexity extends Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection: that self-organization, selection, and chance are the engines of the biosphere. And we gain insights into biotechnology, the stunning magic of the new frontier of genetic engineering--generating trillions of novel molecules to find new drugs, vaccines, enzymes, biosensors, and more. Indeed, Kauffman shows that ecosystems, economic systems, and even cultural systems may all evolve according to similar general laws, that tissues and terra cotta evolve in similar ways. And finally, there is a profoundly spiritual element to Kauffman's thought. If, as he argues, life were bound to arise, not as an incalculably improbable accident, but as an expected fulfillment of the natural order, then we truly are at home in the universe. Kauffman's earlier volume, The Origins of Order, written for specialists, received lavish praise. Stephen Jay Gould called it "a landmark and a classic." And Nobel Laureate Philip Anderson wrote that "there are few people in this world who ever ask the right questions of science, and they are the ones who affect its future most profoundly. Stuart Kauffman is one of these." In At Home in the Universe, this visionary thinker takes you along as he explores new insights into the nature of life.
Customer Reviews:
At home in the universe, A New Proposal..........2007-04-05
In this book, Stuart Koaffman opens new doors to us. Through the theory of the chaos, proportions fractals and their networks boulinas, give an interesting speculation us on the origin of the life, the complex systems and the societies. It is hour to be on the awares and to try to focus to us in new horizons. This book took to him of the hand by these new horizons. It is hour to know our house in the universe...
Proposals to Unanswered Questions.......2006-09-16
Stuart Kaufman's At Home in the Universe is a lay redaction his scientific hypotheses from his Origins of Order, a rich, fascinating, sophisticated, and complementary set of hypotheses added to Darwin's theories of evolution. For the moment, at least, they are the promising fruit of speculative or theoretical biological hypotheses (with physics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, mathematics, game theory, and economics thrown in), but they go a long way to filling in many of the gaps that strict Darwinists seem content to ignore. And some of his hypotheses, he readily admits, are heretical.
One of the obvious problems, if not primary one, that Kaufman sets to answer, Is how can natural selection work, culling the fittest to survive, without something to act on? In other words, natural selection operates on the already existent (i.e., regressive engineering), not in the formation of the entity itself. Another problem is that 4 billion years, long as that is, is still not sufficient time for natural selection to have acted through a totally random, step-by-step process in determining today's survivors. Even 100 billion years would not be enough. Another problem is how could so many species have come into existence and failed to survive (99.9%), leaving a mere 100 million for the present, in the span of a mere 4 billion years (mathematically impossible on Darwin's theories alone).
The central theme of Kaufman's work is Self-organized Criticality, a scientific twist on the notion of irreducible complexity (from the Discovery Institute's lexicon, no less), where a minimal degree of inherent complexity in a subcritical-supercritical phase transition is what spontaneously orders the animate world and generates and sustains life in accord with other, as yet, unknown, but implicit laws. From the moment that a sufficiently critical diversity of molecules reached the ideal phase transition, life itself was "spontaneously generated" as inevitable, not by accident. Once life appeared, the acts of natural selection, adaptation, coevolution, evolution of coevolution, cellular, morphological, and physiological differentiation, ontogeny, niches, populations, stable cum-chaotic dynamics, etc., could operate, but in addition to forces beyond natural selection. And while speculative, apparently many scientists share Kaufman's intuitions, inferences, and insights.
But the "other" force or forces is not mystical, much less divine, even if they may be truly awesome. Rather, it is in the nature of the universe, and more particularly in our evolving earth, that these implicit laws work in tandem with Darwin's laws. At this point, these laws are posited from the empirical knowledge we do have, but have not yet demonstrated in the scientific manner to make them even hypotheses. But Kaufman's speculative biology is not a whimsical or arbitrary metaphysics, but logical inferences based on laws and facts already in place. Having done the easy work (thinking the notions of what these other general laws of nature must be like), now science must work in earnest to confirm or reject his speculative hypotheses.
The key word and concept throughout this humorous, heady, and exacting exposition is "complexity" and within the manifold complexities of lives, environments, and mutually intersecting dynamics is a spontaneous order that arises "for free" that in turn sustains stable and steady systems just at the subcritical-supercrticial phase transition (e.g., horizon, or "edge of chaos"). Another key word and concept is "dynamic." Steady-state and homeostasis are often thought of as a static plateau, but that is mistaken, as such states are actually in a fluctuating dynamic at the phase transition between equilibrium (death) and disequilibrium (disorder). Indeed, on many different levels, living organisms are born, dwell, and die precisely at this phase transition between the subcritical (stasis, moribund) and supercritical (chaotic, disordered) states. And the key thesis is that order ("for free") is embedded in the delicate balancing act precisely at this phase transition.
Kaufman extrapolates some of these implicit biological laws and applies them to human cultural and technological advancement. The "fit" is remarkably uncanny, helping us to understand some of the dynamics of technological improvements (and diminishing returns), innovation, extinction, and spontaneity of the economy. Perhaps the most salient features are the concepts of "dynamic" and "spontaneous."
Moreover, if an analogy can be drawn from the biosphere and ecology to the social and political realms, the overwhelming preponderance of biological evidence screams complexity, diversity, and interdependence of organisms and their environments, which arise spontaneously and reciprocally to each other, in a constant dynamic that is vibrant, active, and always on the threshold of "chaos," but retains some stability through change. It is only those social and political forms that are "adaptive" that are socially and politically the "fittest," and democracy and market economies are obviously the most adaptive mechanisms to adapt to changing human needs.
Frederick Hayek addressed himself to these very issues over 50 years ago, and called the market economy and democracies "spontaneous" associations, in contradistinction to "planned" economies and governments. The former "adapt" to changing environments and circumstances, while the latter lack flexibility, and thus do not easily yield to adaptive mechanisms. "Planned" economies attempt to calculate rationally human desires, motivations, and needs in either an abstract or a priori fashion, then calculate the mode of production, the degree, and whether to accommodate, as if some "Absolute Human Mind" could anticipate all contingencies and changes by a simple mathematical formula. The problem is that bureaucrats are notoriously theory-laden and too calculating to include, much less advance, diversity (think Medicare Part D for "planned" absurdity). In practice, socialisms impede innovation and stifle ingenuity. With no means of adaptation, there is no "fittest," much less any mechanism to adapt to the actual dynamics of the world.
Communism's planned economy is an extreme case of an irrational calculus asserting what the government will allow, applying the lowest-common denominator as a criterion of sufficiency. We all know of the U.S.S.R.'s food lines, limited products, forced housing, inferior merchandise, and minimal labor investment. But even weaker forms of the rational calculus, such as socialism, does not do much better. At least their democracies allow policies to change, even if it becomes years for government to adapt to the new exigencies. Even the most socialized societies have "capitalist" outlets, to provide some barometer of social wants and meeting them. Social insurance makes sense on many fronts, but social or state "planning" of economics has rotted state and worker. Kaufman's biological analogies explain why.
Postscript: Kaufman's book is a provocative, challenging, and fascinating (sometime heady) read. Even if all of his hypotheses in the abstract are found to be untrue, at least he captures the reader's imagination, and asks the questions that most of us non-dogmatic Darwinians have raised for some time. In a time when the "easy" and "orthodox" are all too convenient for slipping under the rug, Kaufman's questions (and suggested answers) go the the very nexus of the difficulties. His suggested answers are at once perhaps too simple, on the other hand, perhaps too complex. What is refreshing, above all, is that he's not afraid to ask, and even less fearful of suggesting solutions. Thank gawd for the Sante Fe Institute, where brave and curious minds still ask questions.
Fascinating Science Applicable to Evolution and Business.......2006-05-17
Stuart brings the science of complexity and complex adaptive systems to a broad range of topics from evolution to business to learning curves. The book is masterly written to allow you to skim over the formulas without lossing the excitement or to dig into the technology to understand its broad application.
A fascinating look at self-organization.......2005-01-18
We see a great deal of order in living systems. Where does this order come from? Is it entirely from natural selection? The author says no. He explains that much of the order we see in the world is spontaneous, such as in the symmetry of snowflakes, and that much of the order needed for the origination of life and in living organisms is of this spontaneous nature.
Kauffman is making a non-trivial point here, as the extent to which spontaneous order is more important than selected order is not entirely obvious. While a snowflake is indeed an example of a system that is highly ordered as it gets synthesized, that's not true of, say, a solar system, in which short-lived bodies quickly depart the scene in favor of long-lived ones. It's clearly significant that disordered entities tend to be shorter-lived and unable to replicate.
The author then addresses theories of the origin of life. Could it have started with RNA? After all, replicating RNA could then produce the needed proteins. Kauffman says no. The amino acid chains one would need would be too long to replicate accurately enough (the "error catastrophe"). I tend to agree. Besides, RNA is awfully fragile (DNA is not fragile). And once one hypothesizes that RNA has a template to keep it safe, one's theory is that templates came first.
Of course, the "error catastrophe" is devastating if the minimum complexity of a living cell is rather large. Kauffman argues that this minimum complexity is indeed large, and that it is no accident that there are hundreds of genes in pleuromona, perhaps the simplest free-living (non-virus) organism.
Spontaneous order also refutes the argument of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life could not have arisen on Earth because the chance of creating the 2000 functioning enzymes would be too small: 1 in 10 to the 40,000. Well, given that life does exist here, the Hoyle argument is almost certainly wrong anyway (with a chance that small, the odds would be overwhelmingly small for life to arise anywhere, ever, so the chance that the argument is wrong must be huge, since a correct argument might then give a much higher probability for life to appear).
The author then asks how we get the large polymers we need. After all, life is basically autocatalysis (that's what I was taught in the 1960s, and that's what Kauffman says as well). How does this big autocatalytic set get into gear? The author makes an analogy to putting connectors between random pairs of entities. At first the length of a connected chain will be small. But once the number of connections is about half the number of entities, the longest chain quickly becomes almost as large as the number of entities. That raises the question of how all these entities can interact, but Kaufmann says that having reactions on a substrate, effectively reducing the region to two dimensions, helps. So does having less water around.
We then get to the question of homeostasis. That requires plenty of order. Is there a way to get that order "for free?" The author says there is, and here is where he makes his most dramatic point. He points out that a network with 100,000 entities (call them "light bulbs") with two states each, has 10 to the 30,000 possible states. One might expect such a network to cycle through the square root of the number of states, or 10 to the 15,000. But it actually tends to cycle through the square root of the number of binary variables, which is only the square root of 100,000 or about 317. That is a huge amount of "order for free!" And it argues strongly for life's origination to be unsurprising. As Kauffman puts it, this changes life on Earth from being "We, the improbable," to "We the expected."
There's plenty more in this fine book. The author discusses order in ontogeny. And he has a chapter on the relationship between the diversity of species in an ecosystem and the diversity of organic molecules added from outside. And there's also plenty of material on "fitness landscapes."
One question that arises in this book is statistical: how long does a species tend to last? That has implications for the question of how long humans will last. It may not be that long. But that doesn't bother me, as long as we're replaced with something better. After all, I'm for progress!
Fantastic and enlightening.......2004-03-21
This particular book is a fantastic revelation and study of the boundary between order and chaos as it applies to the evolution of life, culture, technology and anything else in the universe. Its goal is to seek a universal law regarding the emergence of order in what we've traditionally considered unordered or random sets of fundamental stuff. For example, one of the observations that it makes is that evolution as Darwin revealed it is by itself not a sufficient explanation (scientifically) for why and how creatures like us could be here at all. In other words, natural selection is not sufficient to accomplish what life has accomplished in this world of ours. It needed the help of a very important other "force"... the life force, I might call it, and to which I've alluded many times in many forms through my writings. It's that special something about the nature of the universe that brings about the cooperation of systems, the autocatalytic closure which makes "hanging together" and "existing" some sort of "goal" deeply encoded in the nature of it all. You might be able to see how I might identify these ideas very closely with that term "lifetoward". What goal-oriented force brought life to be and continues to make life strive for ever more order and complexity? This book answers I think very well with: it's not a force, per se, but rather a fundamental aspect of the basic nature of the universe. To quote the book, "We the expected." We as living beings belong here and are an integral part of an incredibly awe inspiring process of creation of meaning and order in a world aching to give birth to it. The book closes with a nice summary, which much like a message I had posted to the lifetoward@yahoogroups.com list some time ago, extols the development of a new and enlightened faith, based on a realization of the wonder of the way the universe deeply is and how we are in it.
In terms of the meaning and importance of this book, I would recommend it to everyone. However, I will warn you that it may be a significant challenge to read. It calls on a deeply considered understanding of a variety of disciplines, including most notably evolutionary biology, organic chemistry, mathematics, anthropology, and economics. It proceeds with an assumption that the reader has realized or can quickly recognize the common ground between these different areas of study. It uses a lot of mathematical models and visualizations of 2, 3 and hyperdimensional spaces to discuss the nature of this common law and its emergence in the world around us.
Book Description
All living things are remarkably complex, yet their DNA is unstable, undergoing countless random mutations over generations. Despite this instability, most animals do not grow two heads or die, plants continue to thrive, and bacteria continue to divide. Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems tackles this perplexing paradox. The book explores why genetic changes do not cause organisms to fail catastrophically and how evolution shapes organisms' robustness. Andreas Wagner looks at this problem from the ground up, starting with the alphabet of DNA, the genetic code, RNA, and protein molecules, moving on to genetic networks and embryonic development, and working his way up to whole organisms. He then develops an evolutionary explanation for robustness.
Wagner shows how evolution by natural selection preferentially finds and favors robust solutions to the problems organisms face in surviving and reproducing. Such robustness, he argues, also enhances the potential for future evolutionary innovation. Wagner also argues that robustness has less to do with organisms having plenty of spare parts (the redundancy theory that has been popular) and more to do with the reality that mutations can change organisms in ways that do not substantively affect their fitness.
Unparalleled in its field, this book offers the most detailed analysis available of all facets of robustness within organisms. It will appeal not only to biologists but also to engineers interested in the design of robust systems and to social scientists concerned with robustness in human communities and populations.
Book Description
Do genes explain life? Can advances in evolutionary and molecular biology account for what we look like, how we behave, and why we die? In this powerful intervention into current biological thinking, Brian Goodwin argues that such genetic reductionism has important limits.
Drawing on the sciences of complexity, the author shows how an understanding of the self-organizing patterns of networks is necessary for making sense of nature. Genes are important, but only as part of a process constrained by environment, physical laws, and the universal tendencies of complex adaptive systems. In a new preface for this edition, Goodwin reflects on the advances in both genetics and the sciences of complexity since the book's original publication.
Customer Reviews:
Something of Value, but User Assembly Required.......2006-03-08
Goodwin and some others like to call his point a view a new theory of evolution. Call it what you will, I think it falls way short of a new theory, mostly in the body of evidence category, but also because it doesn't understand and refute Darwinian theory.
What it is, is, a collection of interesting observations that points out that not all in morphology is determined by genetics, but that "excitable systems" are responsible for some aspects of developement and speciation. To me, this helps explains the sources of randomness and arbitrary choice we see in genetic drift or in neutral adapation theory. It is an interesting new flavor in the frosting of the Darwinian cake, but it is not a new cake.
What irritates me to no end about this book is the last two chapters, in which Goodwin makes a totally unsubstantiated (and barely followable) leap to connect his work to the Gaia hypothesis. Here he becomes cloyingly sweet and politically correct in one breath, and it is here that I finally suffocated.
Misinformed.......2005-11-19
Brian Goodwin's book might be worth reading from the perspective that it brings a voice to a little-heard structuralist perspective on evolution. As a biologist myself, though, I have to say that Goodwin misses the mark. Goodwin's knowledge of Darwinian theory is inadequate to critique it, and his knowledge of genetics abyssmal.
Goodwin's central thesis is that organisms adapt out of a structural interaction with the environment. Sort of like a crystal forming on an icy window. Interesting idea, and perhaps with some developmental relevance, but the simple fact that two genetically different organisms placed in an identical environment (an experiment that has been repeated ad naseum since the invention of genetics) are observed to develop differently pretty much lays ruin to Goodwin's thesis.
Readers who are not scientists should know that Goodwin's ideas are tin-foil-hat fringe and lacking in both empirical support and in any demonstration that they lead to a productive research program. This is not a book to read if you wish to learn anything about evolutionary science. It is a book to read if you'd like a novel- if not entirely sane- view on biological change.
Neither Goodwin nor Dembski understands evolution.......2004-06-30
This book is the source of a widely circulated quote by William Dembski which proves beyond a doubt that neither Goodwin nor Dembski has the faintest idea of how evolution works.
Goodwin describes how Sol Spiegelman put some viral RNA in a test tube, along with a "replicase" molecule whose job is to duplicate RNA. He heated the RNA for a while to force the replicase to make copies of the RNA, then took a sample, purified it and used it to innoculate a second test tube. After the RNA in that test tube had been copied, he took a sample, purified it and used it to innoculate a third test tube. This continued for twenty some "generations", at which time the RNA was reduced to a small fraction of its original length and was duplicating much faster than the original because there was so much less to duplicate.
First Goodwin, then Dembski and now the whole Intelligent Design universe think this somehow shows that evolution is impossible. What it actually shows is that if RNA or DNA has no function, it won't be missed if it disappears - and 90 percent of the RNA had no function in the test tube environment. The only parts that were doing something were the parts that the replicase used to find the start and end points for its copying function.
This is made abundantly clear in the original paper when Spiegelman states that after the fourth transfer, the RNA became incapable of infecting a cell. That means that in real life, the "experiment" would have stopped right there because the shortened, defective RNA would not have been passed on.
Unfortunately, first Goodwin and then Dembski completely misunderstood this experiment and now Dembski has spread the misunderstanding to the entire religious community. They both owe the world an apology.
Well I've changed my spots!.......2002-06-21
The main theme is about how DNA doesn't need to provide information in every detail to produce an organism. Chemical, physical and mathematical forces also play a significant part in the production of an organism. The book is also about how natural selection is not the only process at work for evolutionary advancement. I totally agree with the conclusion, and he's sure changed my thoughts on the subject, but it was a challenge to read it all because of the way it is written. It could have been more fun.
For the others that read this book and still don't get "how the leopard changed its spots" - its a metaphor. Leopards aren't supposed to change their spots. The leopard symbolises scientists like Richard Dawkins and others who are fixated with genetic evolution and DNA. After reading this book, will they change their ways? Its not about leopards!
It does have loads of fascinating examples, with all the relevant diagrams & figures to make the point clear, so he's done a good job assembling all of those. From ant colonies & the BZ reaction, to evolution of the eye & fibrillation in the human heart. An example: it is the concentration of calcium that causes the single celled organism (Acetabularia) to grow to a particular shape, NOT the DNA. He also explains why a sunflower seed head forms a spiral, and it is all to do with mathematics, nothing to do with sunflower DNA.
The trouble with this book is that the author uses the word "dynamic" waaaay too much. It quickly becomes very annoying. He is obsessed with that word. Open the book at random, and you will see what I am talking about. Aside from that, it is very tedious to read. Instead of making the ideas easily understood, it seems Brian Goodwin goes out of his way to make it complicated.
I'd really like to give it 3.5 stars, because at the end of it I was glad I read it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone, because there are better books out there (you might like to see my other reviews on popular science books). Remember that you can only read a limited number of books in your lifetime, and this one is not perfect. Buy it ONLY if you're specifically interested in this field of science OR you've read all the truly good books out there and want to lower your standards a bit and still keep reading popular science!
Dynamics and evolution.......1999-11-22
This is a great book. Readers interested in understanding the rules that shape morphogenesis over evolution should read it. Goodwin provides convincing evidence for fundamental dynamic rules involved in the generation of form. Together with natural selection, these mechanisms offer a more complete view of how evolution works.
Book Description
Darwin's greatest accomplishment was to show how life might be explained as the result of natural selection. But does Darwin's theory mean that life was unintended? William A. Dembski argues that it does not. As the leading proponent of intelligent design, Dembski reveals a designer capable of originating the complexity and specificity found throughout the cosmos. Scientists and theologians alike will find this book of interest as it brings the question of creation firmly into the realm of scientific debate. Updated with a new Preface by the author.
Customer Reviews:
Stop trying to fill in the blanks.......2007-07-11
Even if someone decided to believe that evolution cannot explain every single detail about nature, there is no reason to simply fill in the blanks with some kind of god.
A lack of complete knowledge is a reason to keep studying and keep searching for the verifiable answer. To fill in the gaps of our knowledge with "god did it" is senseless and irresponsible logic.
An excellent argument, intelligently presented.......2006-08-21
I was surprised to see this book tagged by someone named "John" (most likely the John Kwok who reviewed the book below) with 'science fiction.' Ironically, avowed atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins once stated that "this book [referring to one of his books] should be read as though it is science fiction."
This book is very technically complex with mathematics that went completely over my head. However, the fact remains that evolution does not answer all the questions that neo-Darwinians wished it did. Intelligent design provides that answer. If an arrowhead were found, an archaeologist would study it and classify it as perhaps coming from the Bronze Age. But to then turn around and state that the more highly complex DNA molecule 'just happened' by 'blind, random chance' is a huge leap of faith and seems, by all accounts, unreasonable and illogical.
Intelligent design is not simply going to go away because a few atheists and scientists want it to. A poll revealed that 51% of Americans doubt the validity of evolution. Does this mean that they are all 'stupid' and 'uninformed' as Dawkins once claime? No, it does not. It means that the evidence for evolution has not completely convinced them. Religion may or may not be a factor, since even agnostics put their trust in intelligent design. To dismiss it as being a theological or religious argument ignores this fact and reduces it to a philosophical debate, not an empirical one.
'Tis Philosophical Nonsense, Might as Well be a Text on Klingon Cosmology............2006-08-14
I had once remarked, in a previous Amazon.com review of another book written by William Dembski, how I was amazed by his literary productivity, observing that he had published far more books in a short span of time than either Niles Eldredge or Frank McCourt combined (I am sure that both Eldredge and McCourt would be in complete agreement.). My amazement continues in my latest review of "No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence", since Dembski has had more time writing self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design and his "explanatory filter" than conducting any serious research which could shed some light on this issue. Once more, Dembski uses some intellectually sloppy logic to contend that irreducible complexity cannot be the result of anything other than intelligence, presumably from the hand of an Intelligent Designer (He's unnamed, but for those who wish to understand who the Designer is, then you should realize that this individual is known to millions as Jehovah, Allah, Ahura Mazda, or rather, in plain English, our Christian Lord, GOD.). As another customer reviewer has noted aptly, Dembski has provided a transparently sophisticated statement of William Paley's "Watch maker" argument, which was considered, then refuted, by leading scientists during the 18th and 19th Centuries, many of whom were also members of the Protestant clergy, especially in Great Britain (In other words, "Intelligent Design" is not a bold new scientific theory, but merely, the rebirth of an outmoded, intellectually disingenuous idea which was rejected by prominent scientists hundreds of years ago.).
The arguments presented by Dembski are not only intellectually dishonest, but now, irrelevant, as determined by Republican Federal Judge John Jones in his landmark, historic decision for the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Board of Education trial; Jones concluded that intelligent design is a religious doctrine masquerading as science (It is posted online:
htttp://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/all_legal/2005-12-20_kitzmiller_decision.pdf).
Furthermore, thoughtful, reasonable conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and George Will have written lucid, brilliant columns praising the theory of evolution via natural selection, and condemning intelligent design for being an unscientific, religious doctrine (EDITORIAL NOTE: I greatly appreciate Luther Lucidity's thoughtful comments on Intelligent Design (SEE BELOW), which merely emphasize my point that it is an intellectually dishonest misappropriation of science, and a point that Judge Jones would be in complete agreement.).
There are other, more important - and intellectually sound - books available on the so-called "creation vs. evolution" controversy (Intelligent Design has been judged correctly as the latest flavor of creationism enjoying some popularity amongst fundamentalist Protestant Christians; one notable biologist has referred to it as "reborn creationism".), which I regard as more worthy than any of Dembski's self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design. Philosopher Robert Pennock's "Tower of Babel" is a splendid historical overview and philosophical deconstruction of creationism, including the best written rebuke of "Intelligent Design" which I've come across (He also covers Dembski's "explanatory filter", and demolishes it too from a philosophical perspective.). Philip Kitcher, another philosopher, published "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism" back in the early 1980s, but his arguments are still quite valid today. My friend Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God" has an eloquent critique of Intelligent Design, focusing on Michael Behe's mousetrap model of irreducible complexity which claims to bestow validity on Intelligent Design. Distinguished American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) invertebrate paleobiologist Niles Eldredge offers yet another brilliant critique of Intelligent Design in his book "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life", the elegant companion volume to the AMNH Darwin exhibition which he curated, soon to embark on a tour taking it to many of North America's and Great Britain's finest science museums. And last, but not least, Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), has written a fine textbook on this issue, "Evolution vs. Creationism". All of these books are more desirable than Dembski's "No Free Lunch". Otherwise, if you insist on purchasing this book, then perhaps you might choose to acquire instead a splendid text devoted to Klingon cosmology (Neither Klingon cosmology nor "Intelligent Design" can be regarded as scientific, since both depend on faith, not reason, to validate their principles.).
A Mathematical Proof of Intelligent Design.......2006-06-22
No Free Lunch, the sequel to mathematician and philosopher William Dembski's Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. Dembski explains that the Darwinian search mechanism of random mutation coupled with natural selection is incapable of generating novel complex, specified information (CSI).
This observation translates into "No Free Lunch" (NFL) theorems, which Dembski explains are inherent constraints upon natural systems. Natural Darwinian mechanisms can shuffle this information around, but only intelligence can generate novel CSI. In other words, when it comes to generating truly novel biological complexity, Darwin can have no free lunch.
Some critics have asserted that he has never applied his model for detecting design to any real biological systems. The latter half of this book debunks this fallacious objection, and provides a detailed calculation of the CSI found in the bacterial flagellum. Dembski assesses the complexity of the flagellum on various levels, including its protein parts and its assembly instructions, finding that the amount of CSI contained in the flagellum vastly outweigh the probabilistic resources available in the history of the universe to construct such a structure, absent intelligent design.
No Free Lunch demonstrates that design theory shows great promise of providing insight in the field of evolutionary computation. If Dembski is right, then the ability of genetic algorithms to solve complex problems is a function of the amount of intelligent design inputted by their programmers.
ignore the naysayers.......2006-03-24
Ignore the one-star reviews. The unifying factor in all of them is an irrational hatred of Christianity, a misrepresentation of both Christian teachings and ID, and a reliance on ad hominem attacks. Really, now, I thought most people got beyond such name-calling by about, oh, the third grade.
Despite the bombast, no one has adequately answered either Behe or Dembski. I think the evolutionists would be embarrassed by now by their reliance on so many just-so stories to support an increasingly implausible theory.
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Complexity, Language, and Life: Mathematical Approaches (Biomathematics)
John L. Casti
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0387161805 |
Book Description
This book is an assessment and review of the recent progress in integrating evolutionary modeling and computation, molecular and developmental evolution, and nonlinear population dynamics into evolutionary theory. It brings together a wide range of eminent researchers in evolutionary dynamics in order to formulate a comprehensive theory that builds on nonlinear mathematics and physics. The text is divided into four sections: macroevolution; ephochal evolution; population genetics, dynamics, and optimization; and evolution of cooperation, each containing several in-depth chapters and discussions.
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Innovation, Evolution and Complexity Theory
Koen Frenken
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
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ASIN: 1843761971 |
Book Description
The motivation behind this book is the desire to integrate complexity theory into economic models of technological evolution. By means of developing an evolutionary model of complex technological systems, the book contributes to the neo-Schumpetarian literature on innovation, diffusion and technological paradigms.
Book Description
John Tyler Bonner argues that we can understand progression in terms of natural selection, but that in order to do so we must consider the role of development--or more precisely the role if life cycles--in evolutionary change.
Customer Reviews:
Though 12 years old, it still has a wealth of ideas!.......2000-08-02
Bonner is a master developmental/evolutionary biologist who is best known for his work on the development and morphogenesis of a little known group of organisms called slime molds. A wonderful group of organisms, by the way. In this book, however, Bonner takes on the task of explaining how natural selection can produce increasingly complex systems of living things. A formidable challenge.
The book contains 8 chapters, as follows:
1. A brief summary of Darwinian evolution, along with an indication of the purpose of the book.
In this section Bonner addresses issues such as time, what natural selection is, and the roles that factors such as development, ecology, behavior, and genetics play in the processes of evolution. This chapter is a great primer on ideas regarding natural selection.
2. Evidence for the evolution of size increase (and decrease) from the fossil record.
In this chapter Bonner presents data from the fossil record (which is unavoidably biased) that indicates how the size of things have changed over time. He makes a case that, generally speaking, things have tended to get larger over time.
3. The size of organisms in ecological communities.
Here is a good thought to consider while reading this chapter...organisms of increased size are necessarily more structurally complex than smaller organisms, but, complexity that allowed increases in size to occur existed BEFORE those size increases took place (e.g., mammals). In this chapter Bonner considers topics such as relations between the size and abundance of organisms, size and life histories, size changes wtihin a species, and size in sexual selection. A great chapter full of thought provoking ideas!
4. A problem in developmental biology: Why and how larger plants and animals are built.
In this chapter Bonner addresses these topics: ways to become multicellular; selective forces for multicellularity; development of support structures (thus allowing increased size); proportions and size; developmental steps and size; and the legacy (opportunities and constraints) of past developments.
5. The relation between the complexity of communities and the size, diversity, and abundance of the organisms within them.
This is the chapter that will catch ecologists' eyes. In this chapter Bonner discusses what complexity is, relationships between diversity, abundance, and size, connections between diversity and habitat, and the evolution of diversity. Great stuff!
6. How size affects the internal complexities of organisms in their evolution and in their development.
This was my favorite chapter in the book. Since I have done a good chunk of research on clonal animals, I was interested in reading Bonner's thoughts on clonal versus aclonal animals (the first topic in this chapter). He also addresses topcis such as size and internal complexity, cell size and internal complexity, how large complex organisms are built, plasticity in development, the evolution of internal complexity, and related ideas. This chapter will catch the attention of developmental/evolutionary biologists.
7. Animal behavior: The pinnacle of biological complexity.
In this chapter Bonner looks at relationships between behavior and nervous systems, and natural selection and behavior.
8. The evolution of complexity: A conclusion with three insights.
Bonner concludes with three insights: 1) somatic versus genomic complexity; 2) size-complexity connections; and 3) and connections between integration and isolation.
Though this book is now 12 years old, it is well worth the effort. Bonner does a great job of making complex ideas understandable, and he is able to bring the professional and advanced amateur along for the ride. At 241 pp. this book is not a daunting challenge. It is a great addition to anyone's library!
5 stars, no doubt about it!
Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College, IN
Book Description
Why, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people's everyday existence.
Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding world. This book proposes an alternative view of evolving complexity. Bird argues that randomness means not disorder but infinite order. Complexity arises not from many random events of natural selection (although these are not unimportant) but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems -- which are best described mathematically. When we properly understand the complex interplay of chaos and life, Bird contends, we will see that many events that appear random are actually the outcome of order.
Customer Reviews:
A Thought-Provoking Book.......2005-10-24
Bird makes a strong case for the use of Chaos theory and Fractals to model life. But he sometimes goes too far and seems to ascribe more power to the mathematics than it actually has; he makes it sound mystical at times. On page 266, the paragraph starting with Chomsky is very profound but isolated and not developed in the remainder of the text. All in all, I recommend the book.
Critique of Neo-Darwinism .......2005-04-29
This fascinating voyage braiding evolutionary thinking with chaos theory starts with a cogent critique of current Neo-Darwinism in a fashion reminiscent of Robert Wesson's _Beyond Natural Selection_. Students of evolution are seldom aware of the criticisms of Darwin springing from scientists themselves, or of the attempts to really grapple with the problems without the distractions of the current Darwin debate, which is mostly propaganda.
Books:
- Oxidative Stress and Antioxidant Protocols (Methods in Molecular Biology)
- Physiological Basis of Aging and Geriatrics, Third Edition
- Plant Ecology
- Primer of Applied Regression & Analysis of Variance
- Protein Purification Techniques: A Practical Approach (Practical Approach Series)
- Regression Methods in Biostatistics: Linear, Logistic, Survival, and Repeated Measures Models (Statistics for Biology and Health)
- Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects Volume 1: Birthmarks
- Research Methods in Physical Activity
- Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)
- Seven Things That Steal Your Joy: Overcoming the Obstacles to Your Happiness (Meyer, Joyce)
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