Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought
By addebook • Jun 22nd, 2008 • Category: Biology •
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Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2003-12
Sales Rank: 715810
ISBN / ASIN: 023112662X
EAN: 9780231126625
Binding: Hardcover
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
Studio: Columbia University Press
Average Rating: 5
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.
Review:
A Thought-Provoking Book
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.
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