Rating: 
Summary: Pure Guesswork
Review: In spite of overwhelning evidence that seems to point in the other direction, Kauffman tries to paint a picture of man's belonging to the universe. A short glance at the history of mankind gives no support to the idea, on the contrary. There's also no real evidence in Kauffman's book, only a lot of wishful thinking. It's more like a long poem than it is science. Many great philosophers go in the opposite direction of Kauffman. Jean-Paul Sartre says: The person who thinks that man has a nature gets him mixed up with a cauliflower head. Kauffman does precisely that.
Rating: 
Summary: This book had to happen
Review: I read this book when it first came out. At the time I thought it made some profound insights that would surely change the face of evolutionary theory. Of course not having a professional involvement in these matters, I considered the possibility that I had just succumbed to a layman's tendency to too easily say, "Wow!" For a year or two, when I talked about this book and its ideas to friends professionally involved in the biological sciences, they often reinforced that initial concern of mine, but the idea just wouldn't leave my mind no matter how much I doubted myself. To me these ideas presented in this book stand to become new landmarks in thinking about evolution and biology.In the years since, evolving reaction to Stuart Kauffman's ideas have finally provided some measure of confirmation to me of these initial impressions. Evolutionary biologists have started to deal with these ideas seriously though I think much of the community has yet to realize their significance. This book has not proved just the flash in the pan that many pop science and psuedo-science ideas and books do. It only becomes more important with time. His ideas earned some serious treatment from Daniel Dennett in his profound book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." Though I think Dennett only vaguely grasped the importance of the ideas, he clearly did not place them in the same league with the nostalgic crackpot evolution "debunkers." Kauffman proposes no magical "skyhooks" here. If evolution through natural selection reveals the universal acid, then the emergent "order for free" of thermodynamically open systems reveals the universal base, and promises to change our understanding of the universe in every bit as profound ways. Put them together and you get the salt of life. Kauffman's ideas in his books ("At Home in the Universe" for the layman, and "The Origin of Order" for the more technically minded) anticipate the shenanigans of the currently most popular evolution "debunker," Michael Behe, in "Darwin's Black Box." (see my Amazon review of that book as well). Behe will never escape the fact that Kauffman's work came before his, and that he failed to properly and honestly deal with Kauffman's ideas, preferring instead to pretend and imply that Kauffman represented some dismissible fringe crackpot. If he had addressed Kauffman honestly, his own thesis would have proved irrelevant, and his whole book would have had to deal with Kauffman. Behe claimed to base his ideas on some ad hoc concept of "irreducible complexity" which he invented in total disregard of whole fields of research, both Kauffman's and others', already done on the phenomena of complexity. Kauffman's theories of emergent order for free, and complex systems do not overturn the theories of evolution through natural selection. Some in the field of biological evolution have mistakenly believed that represents the intent of Kauffman's theories. In his book he clearly states that they do not. His ideas present a natural compliment to evolution through natural selection. Though Kauffman makes a few passing references to "God," these references have nothing to do with his theories and only serve literary purposes. Perhaps this reflects some awareness of the cultural not to mention scientific minefield he walks through. Intelligent design plays no role in Kauffman's ideas, and his ideas should play no role in intelligent design hypotheses either. In the end Kauffman's theories put to rest the orthodox evolutionary picture that life and humanity represent an "accident," glorious or otherwise as well as our understandable intuitive objections to that picture. Life, even intelligent life, while not necessarily guided by a divine intelligence, has a certain inevitability to it. If we didn't happen, something very similar to us would have happened eventually somewhere. The mystery of initial biogenesis clearly unravels with Kauffman's revelation of the mathematics of autocatalytic sets and their inevitable emergence in thermodynamically open complex systems. If the jargon of the previous sentence confuses you, do not despair. Kauffman does a wonderful job of walking the reader through all of these concepts so that his ideas become accessible to both the layman as well as the expert. If you made it through high school science, you can make it through, "At Home in the Universe." Kauffman takes some time at the end of the book for philosophical musings which serve as a great reward to the reader who gets there. Among other things at the end, while musing about more cultural applications of his ideas, he talks briefly about Dawkin's idea of "meme" (introduced in "The Selfish Gene") several years before it became such a popular idea with Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind", Aaron Lynch's "Thought Contagion" (both published at about the same time), and most recently Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine." Don't miss this book. It presented the cutting edge at the time he wrote it, and it promises to stay on the cutting edge for decades to come. It only stands to become sharper with time, because Kauffman has far more than just hyped lay enthusiasts like myself behind these ideas. This book had to happen. If not by Stuart Kauffman, then somebody else sooner or later. As Daniel Dennett would say these ideas represent eventually forced moves in the evolutionary space of scientific theory. I feel fortunate that someone as accessible as Stuart Kauffman made them.
Rating:
Summary: First glimpses of the new horizon
Review: As is clear from Kaufmann's description of autocatalytic processes, natural processes DO show the type of organization and complexity that are very often thought to be characteristic of Life. What Kaufmann says, is that the physics and chemistry of evolution imply criticality, i.e. situations in which suddenly a system 'jumps' into a higher level organized state. His laws of complexity are laws in the sense of 'chemical laws', which are not laws in addition to those of physics, but rather higher level descriptions of chemical regularities which find their ultimate explanation in physics. Kaufmann shows that the WAY in which evolution works may involve concepts that have yet to be fully appreciated; evolutionary biology is a science, not a devine revelation, and therefore develops, sometimes with small steps, sometimes with big revolutions. Some views expressed in the past about HOW evolution works, are overturned by newer insights; so what, that is what makes science interesting! Kaufmann's message, is that there are relatively new insights into the physics and chemistry of complex systems which will come to play a big role in evolutionary biology; this message provides further support for the concept of evolution, rather than undermining it. The coming decades (biology is complex) are guaranteed to be mighty interesting! Darwin did bring the origin of Life into the reach of the natural sciences; he may be forgiven for not having said the last word on it.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good exploration of complexity
Review: This is a good exploration of the notions of complexity, and explores Kauffmans notions of self organizing systems and autocatalytic networks. He should have touched on the increasing of the complexity of organisms through random mutation for more improbable genes. He does touch on organism complexity lightly, but it is too cursory to give the book 5 stars. (I am biased I guess). Where is the section on bifurcating dissipative phenomena? And on analyzing the state vector of systems without using entropy partitions? Overall the book is a good read and introduction to Kauffmans own special take on complexity.
Rating:
Summary: Awe inspiring
Review: The fact that the laws which Kauffman seeks and explains in this book are merely theories that are yet to be proven is not the issue which would make Darwinists nervous here. Rather it is the fact that materialist's contemporary theories such as natural selection simply fall short of explaining the species of the natural world - hence theories such as Kauffman's are necessarily being sought after. In his books 'The Origins of Order' and 'At Home in the Universe', Kauffman has done more than anyone else to supply the key missing piece for self-organization that can join the random and the deterministic forces of evolution into a satisfactory theory of life's order. Unfortunately, the said key piece happens to make the theistic view more plausible than the Neo-Darwinists' view. For this reason, not everyone will wish to accompany Kauffman, but the description of the trip is significant, and should not be ignored.
Rating: 
Summary: Ok, ok, you kids settle down!
Review: DON'T MAKE ME TURN THIS HYPERCYCLE AROUND! The laws that Kauffman seeks are far from evident. The subtitle of this book promises The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. But the search comes up empty. Kauffman admits that he is searching for laws he has yet to find. My search was equally unfruitful: from where comes Kauffman's confidence that such laws even exist? In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Darwinian gradualist Daniel Dennett seems to rather easily brush aside Kauffman's theories. I'm not saying that Dennett is right, for although Dennett and Kauffman can't both be right, they may both be wrong. I'm saying only that the displays of superstitious awe of this book are, to be kind, premature. It is fascinating and original but after reading it, do you even know the definition of complexity? And now moving from the complex to the simple, a few thoughts on questions raised and thoughts expressed below. I can't speak for creationists but I'd guess their lack of response (or interest) is due to the fact that there is really nothing here to rebut. In that same vein, you can't invoke imaginary laws, no matter how thrilling, to disprove Behe's irreducibility argument, or anyone else's argument for that matter. The rather irate response from the ultra-materialist viewpoint is well stated by "T." a few reviews back. Boy, talk about existing on the edge of chaos.
Rating: 
Summary: Peace or a Sword?
Review: The best recommendation for this book is the fact that Kauffman is more disturbing to the ultra-Darwinists like Dennett and Dawkins than to the creationists. For good reason. Kauffman has opened the hood of neo-Darwinism and found little there, unless you count bluff and promises. He then goes off to save the patient by killing it. No doubt, if the arguments of Behe and others are to be really countered (and not just subjected to the usual smoke and mirrors) then Kauffman, or his kind, will have to do it for neo-Darwinism cannot. Can he? I don't know. He himself calls it 'alchemy' at this point. In any event, he deserves praise for finding the current materialist creeds profoundly lacking.
Rating:
Summary: More Chaos-Psycho Babble
Review: Yet another example of misguided musings emanating from the Santa Fe Institute ( let's apply "Chaos" theory to pop subject matter and sell it to the masses!...Who cares if it lacks any credibility ??! !) His writings about the implications of chaos and random selection on the "evolutionary process" are not only silly, but distorted and just plain wrong. If one is interested in some real research, check out William Hamilton or John Maynard Smith.
Rating:
Summary: Dramatic insight into Life and Business
Review: This outstanding book provides the basis for understanding the extremely complex systems on our life. In some sense, I found it depressing because it provides scientific explanations for many areas that I had attributed to God. In another I found it extremely empowering because it helps to explain many issues that we see in life. For example, there is one chapter that discusses the size of organizations. It provides an explanation for why we see companies divide into business units only to recentralize two years later in an endless cycle. I echo all the other 5 star reviews on this page.
Rating:
Summary: Will become a classic
Review: Demonstrates that macroscopic complexity, which might suggest "intelligent design", can be the unavoidable result of simple microscopic interactive mechanisms, not only in biology. Free copies of this book should be given to all high schools in the US, in particular to those in Kansas. Would be good for some presidential candidates, too. For some reason, no creationist review has yet reached amazon.com; too embarrassing? Go ahead, mr. Behe and friends - make my day!
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