The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution

If you are interested in complexity, self organization, biology, economies etc. Stu Kaufman is one of the greats. I had been studying these ideas for years in and around MIT, but this book is so clear and rigorous that it took me a while s to get over being unready to have written it. Maybe too intense for laymen, but full of brilliant ideas and analysis. Highly recommended.

What an amazing book. It certainly puts you back in your place in the scheme of things and our position in the order of eveolution. Fantastic loved it.

Awesome book that you need absolutely

The author is in love with the sound of his own voice. Far more language is used to describe even simple things than should ever be necessary.

it is very good.fast and excellent

excellent!

Stuart Kauffman has an MD and is a generalist. The book deals primarily with theory and understanding of computer simulations of state driven systems of large numbers of connected nodes. It examines how such systems evolve through mutation and gives a clear understanding of the limited role of natural selection in comparison to the self-organizing forces at work within such systems. It examines the meta-interaction of sub-systems of interacting states (attractor basins) that occur within a system. In English: it gives the first theoretical framework for understanding just how it is that cells which all contain identical DNA express themselves as some number of stable cell types. Normally a cell will react to a perturbation in whatever way will return it to its base stable cycle (attractor loop). One type of cell turns into another type when just the right perturbation kicks the system from one attractor basin into a different attractor basin.This is heavier reading than his popular science book, At Home in the Universe, but preferable for anyone with the necessary tiny amount of knowledge of genetics and logic operations. There are few equations of any kind. The results apply to more than just biological systems.The book is long because instead of just presenting a few principles that you can try to remember abstractly, he leads you through all the important steps of his research and gives you a real feel for how complex systems actually evolve and operate. The book raises more questions than it answers, as it should be for a book of such originality and importance.When you fully grok the contents of this book you'll be so excited you'll want to rush and explain it to someone else, which will be utterly impossible, so you'll probably have to lend them your book, buy them the popular version, or face the fact that you are now relatively alone on a higher plane.

If you love ideas, and especially if you have the background (and love) of biology, chemistry and (the purity of) mathematics, you will stand as Balboa did and hold your breath on viewing the ocean of synthesis Stuart Kauffman has discovered. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience- a hushed cathedral of reverence for the power of intellect and ideas. Will it make anybody rich? No. Will it engender any new inventions or household gadgets? No. What it will do is lift those whose sense of wonder is intact to that holy place where a neuron-storm-created epiphany lives.One of the seminal works of the 20th century.

To follow the main arguments put forward in the book you dont need to have a strong background in Biology in my opinion but a techincal background in some area of computational modelling is invaluable. He takes a very geometrical approach which is fine if, like me, you have a visual kind of mind, if not you may struggle. Serioulsy not an entry level book!That said it is frankly an amazing piece of work.Anybody with serious intent on getting their heads around these issues should definitley consider the commitment needed to read it.

I've read the first 80 pages now. It's brilliant without a doubt. If you're uninitiated like I am you might have to think things through a bit. If you're willing to pay the hefty price and put in the work it's a must-have really.

My husband thinks it is a good read.

Very good

Para interesados en Biología teórica.Especulación razonada sobre la aparición del orden en la materia viva, dentro de la teoría evolucionista.