Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought

by Richard Bird

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231126625
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/26/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard J. Bird is visiting scholar and sometime senior lecturer at Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. He is past president of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue: The Dawn of Man?
1. Iteration and Sequence
2. The Crisis in Biology
3. The Origin of "Species"
4. Chaos and Dimensionality
5. Chaostability
6. The Geometry of Life
7. The Living Computer
8. Morphology and Evolution
9. Entropy, Information, and Randomness
10. The Effectiveness of Mathematics
11. Life and Conflict
12. The World as Iteration and Recursion
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Jack Cohen

Dick's explanations of chaos, stability - chaostability - life and love, climate and culture are usually rigorous, often romantic - and none the worse for that. They are thorough and clear, whether maths or handwaving, logic or Gaia. His emphasis on iteration, recursion and consequent emergence of new properties will explain Complexity thinking to many recruits, but his expositionof problems of organic evolution will upset orthodox biologists who think they understand it. I enjoyed having my cage bars rattled.

— Jack Cohen, co-author of The Collapse of Chaos, Figments of Reality, and Evolving the Alien

Editorial Reviews

This is a formidable piece.

Richmond Times-Dispatch - Paul Johnson

Chaos and Life...literally challenges many of our accepted views of reality...it's extremely well-written, so that if readers are willing to make the effort, they can tread new paths of thought.

Cybernetics and Human Knowledge - Robin Robertson

Bird reveals his philosophical, almost mystical, inclinations... Bird's book is a product of this creative imagination that grapples with the very process itself.

The Scientific and Medical Network - Martin Lockley

Bird's explanation of how organisms tap the universe of archetypes is... radically ingenious.

Times Literary Supplement

Well written and clear, makes a strong case.

Northeastern Naturalist

This thought-provoking work will be valuable reading for students and for professionals trained in ecology and evolution.... it should be required reading for advanced undergraduates, for graduate student seminars, and for discussion courses on the nature of organic evolution. Recommended [for] general readers, upper-level undergraduates and above.

Choice

Bird's explanation of how organisms tap the universe of archetypes is... radically ingenious.

Time Magazines Literary Supplement

Chaos and Life...literally challenges many of our accepted views of reality...it's extremely well-written, so that if readers are willing to make the effort, they can tread new paths of thought.

— Robin Robertson

Cybernetics and Human Knowledge

Bird reveals his philosophical, almost mystical, inclinations... Bird's book is a product of this creative imagination that grapples with the very process itself.

— Martin Lockley

The Scientific and Medical Network

This is a formidable piece.

— Paul Johnson

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Bird (senior lecturer, Northumbria Univ.; president, Soc. for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences) makes a sincere but seriously flawed attempt at a unified explanation of the diversity of organic forms through chaos theory and fractals. He wishes to replace what he calls a "random selection" worldview with an "iterative-sequential" one, in which living forms are derived from repetitions of simple mathematical formulas contained in the repetitive sequences of their DNA. Bird stumbles at the beginning with a critique of Darwinian theory that is fraught with numerous factual errors as well as a basic misunderstanding of its precepts. For example, his repeated characterization of Darwinian evolution as proceeding by the random accumulation of chance genetic events is a caricature of even the most reductive line of neo-Darwinian thought. Bird obviously enjoys making connections among all levels of life experience, and the book finishes on quite a lyrical note. However, the overall symphony is discordant. This is an optional choice for libraries building a collection of divergent worldviews. Other libraries might consider John Holland's Emergence: From Chaos to Order, a core contribution title to the field that is based on solid research by a gifted scientist.-Walter L. Cressler, West Chester Univ. Lib., PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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