At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity

Rating:
Summary: useful
Review: The book is a useful one for the student of mathematical biology.
It establishes some mathematical models of biological processes
and analyzes them. I give it three stars for 2 reasons:
I was not persuaded that the simple models presented are
really good models (capture the essential biology) of real
life and second
I did not like the mixture of theological excursions
with scientific notions which make one suspect the
credibility of the authors conclusions. He probably did this for pedagogical
reasons but I found it negative.

Rating:
Summary: Borderline unreadable
Review: Kauffman undoubtedly has something important to say, but what? Writing skill is unfortunately not a part of his impressive credentials. Spare us the inappropriate anecdotes, biased historical perspective and creationist apologia.

Those seeking a cogent synthesis of some of the ideas buried in this tome are advised to get _Creation_ , by Steve Grand. Steve programmed the Creatures computer game. His book gives a stimulating, well-written look at persistant, emergent phenomena.

Rating:
Summary: Listen
Review: This is man with something to say. Perhaps not the best writer in the world, but if we are to confine our knowledge to that expressed only by journalists, it would be a sorry world indeed. His use of the word "God" is actually what is raising the hackles of his detractors. I am an atheist who doesn't feel that only the ideas of my own kind are legitimate. You will never learn anything if you only listen to people who you already agree with. His observations are sound and the questions he asks need explanation. The current dogma doesn't do it. Let's hear all the voices.

Rating:
Summary: Kauffman let loose garbage
Review: The rating of this book should consider two things. One is the ideas presented along with the evidence to support them. The second is the writing style.

Let me address the second consideration first. The book is terribly written. I know many friends who loved this book for its ideas, but even they agree that the writing style was annoying and immature. With frequent references to God, countless poor analogies, and some really laughable metaphors (I burst out laughing about a page from the end when I read the sentence "Prometheus let loose fire"), I constantly wanted to put the book down and read something on the same material by someone who had some writing talent.

Now to the ideas. There are a few worthy of giving thought. Kauffman argues that complexity necessary for life is more probably than people think. He argues this with analogies, for instance, explaining that with finite state machines, many starting positions will lead to certain self-sustaining loops, and that this is likely when the number of edges surpasses a certain threshold. In almost all his analogies, however, I found him completely unconvincing that the matter he is discussing should follow the analogy. I consider many portions of his book "proof by poor analogy".

I don't have the book in front of me right now, but there were sections in which he discussed computer science and topics involving analysis of algorithms, and made outright factual mistakes. I discussed these sections with some other computer scientists who fully agreed with me that the mistakes were there, and that he used incorrect facts to help support his arguments.

In the end, when I finally finished reading this book, I was completely unimpressed with it, to the point that I have a very hard time understanding what so many very smart people see in it. I understand that they like it for the ideas rather than the writing, but I think that the ideas are not as new as Kauffman makes them out to be (I really get the feeling that he is full of himself), and that he presents very little evidence in support of them. I've heard people compare the importance of this book to Darwin's "The Origin of Species". I think this is so absurd. Darwin's book presented not only the idea of Evolution (which existed way before Darwin), but an unbelievable amount of evidence to support the view that it happened, much of which I didn't know 150 years later until reading his book! I can't imagine any scientifically minded person reading that book and not feeling that evolution happens, even if the way it happens may not be exactly what Darwin expected. Here, on the other hand, we have a book that I consider pseudo-science. It's a few interesting ideas without much evidence; just poor analogies, some erroneous information, poetic nonsense (I'll never forget how frustrated I began to feel each of the many times I read the the phrase "We, the expected"), etc. I would have much rather read a 10 to 20 page paper summarizing the ideas in a well-written manner.

Rating:
Summary: Holistic Revolution
Review: A book that has changed my "weltanschaung". If you can read this book without getting shivers you're not for real. Stuart is a genius, a little bit like Galileo trying to get people to look into the telescope...... As an italian I think it is a shame and a tragedy that no book of Kauffman is translated into italian: I would therefore like to take charge of the publishing in my language. I have also been deeply impacted by the reading of Fritjof Capra's "The Web of Life", which I recommend to all wanderers in the holistic search: actually I believe people should read Capra first, then Margulis, then we are ready for Stuart Kauffman. A last remark (although not least). I have no PHD in science, and as I am now also reading the extraordinary "Investigations" I would really like Kauffmann to understand the importance of the reach of his wanderings: it is really difficult to read, in spite of the fact that maybe not all the scientific stuff has to be put so crudely. I am the president of a media company, I have no scientific background and suspect that the case could have been put in more simple terms. Anyway, Mr. Kauffman, I believe you have written the most important book ever written. Serious. [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: An Unconvincing Attempt
Review: An interesting book: full of ideas and new concepts, but curiously unmotivated. Kauffman's POV is that natural selection is insufficient to explain the diversity and complexity of life, and, therefore, some new laws have to be invoked. However, he fails to prove his claims. As an unabashed selectionist, I find them unconvincing (in fact, most of them boil down to a simple statement that "selection is not enough"). That, in itself, does not prove him wrong: for all I know his ideas are exactly right; he simply fails the scientific parsimony test. If natural selection is enough (a POV that I happen to hold), then, certainly, natural selection plus some laws of complexity will be sufficient. Abiogenesis is the only case where some application of self-organization seems to be necessary.

Another problem I've found with the book is a seeming lack of background research. While quite a goodly part of the book deals with the idea of fitness landscapes, the name of Sewall Wright--the person responsible for the original concept--is not mentioned. The bibliography is curiously devoid of most of the evolutionary biologists: Gould and Dawkins are mentioned, but Mayr, Maynard Smith, Haldane, and many others aren't. I am not talking about an appeal to authority here, but it seems to me that Kauffman should have spent more time dealing and, possibly, refuting the actual selectionist ideas, rather than setting up and destroying straw men. Dennett's cogent arguments from Darwin's Dangerous Idea are not dealt with at all...

All in all, I found the book quite interesting, despite the everpresent paeans to complexity and self-organization, but, ultimately, quite unconvincing. His previous work, The Origins of Order, claimed far less and was far more interesting (although more difficult).

Rating:
Summary: Hopeful self-organization
Review: This recent work explains for the general reader many of Kauffman's ideas of his 1993 The Origins of Order. However, besides being simplified, it appears that many of Kauffman's concepts are more refined in this later reference. The thread/button analogy (as the ratio of connecting edges to nodes increases past .5, the size of the largest connected cluster very rapidly increases, much like a phase transition of ice becoming water as the temperature increases through 0 degrees Celsius) is applied to a large collection of chemicals such that when there are a large enough number of catalyzed reactions a web of catalyzed reactions will suddenly emerge. The order given by such autocatalytic chemical sets is then further explored, with the development of simplifying N (number of elements) - K (number of input connections per element) mathematics describing properties of such sets. While the obvious application of this NK mathematics would be the origin of the first cells from the chemical brew of the primordial Earth, much of the remainder of this reference is the application of the NK model to numerous other areas of biology and even economics. The theme of Kauffman's work, "..then life is not a highly improbable chance event, but almost inevitable...", is opposite of my own. This may possibly be due to the reality that Kauffman's NK-like organization, like many other phenomena, is, within the dynamics of the Universe being considered, a necessary condition, but nowhere close to a sufficient condition, for the emergence of life.

Rating:
Summary: Anything but a simple, clear account of complexity theory
Review: The argument of this book is very interesting: complex systems spontaneously exhibit order; life may be the inevitable result of complexity and not a mere chance occurrence in the vastness of space. Other reviewers have summarized this stuff nicely.

But let me complain: this book is poorly written. Kauffman is drunk with complexity. Every single sentence seems crafted to convey just how weighty this business is. Sentences are overelaborate, examples are chocked with irrelevant details, technical terms are used when they could be left out...and he keeps saying things like "The marvelously simple result is this..." or "A little simple algebra reveals the very easy conclusion that...". The need to call things simple should warn the writer that he has not made things simple at all.

Apparently, Kauffman is the leading theorist in this area. No doubt his work is interesting to a broad audience. But this effort at simplifying complexity theory for a broad audience just fails. Surely there is a better guide to this terrain.

Rating:
Summary: A turning point in the Darwin debate
Review: This important work leads the exodus from one-dimensional Darwinian selectionism in a fashion that does not succumb to transcendental explanation or abdication from naturalism, whatever the word means. The views of George Wald, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe and others have waited a long time for acknowledgement and some real attempts at scientific hypothesis formation. It is also true the road to real answers is a long one, and Kauffman's work does as much to reveal the difficulties as provide the final answers. Every step of the way is likely to receive scorn from those who would bypass the collosal difficulties with the attitude, 'I give up God did it'. This work is liberating and a snapshot of real scientific enquiry in action.

Rating:
Summary: There is a superb book hiding inside it!
Review: Other reviewers already sang praises to the concepts and the ideas contained ni this book, and I have nothing to add other than my agreement. BUT! The book would have been improved no end by some ruthless editing. The opening chapters in particular are immensely repetitive. The style is very uneven, sometimes apparently aiming at readers with no technical knowledge (and a miniscule attention span), while in other places packing ideas to such density that even a fairly informed reader can start gasping for breath.

I made the mistake of reading it on holidays, with no access to a computer. Big mistake! I kept wanting to program, to check out what the author was saying, to try variants and elaborations. I.e. to have lots of hands-on fun -- it's that sort of a book and I can think of no higher recommendation. But please, oh please, somebody introduce Kaufman to a good editor!