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

Rating:
Summary: Best book I ever read
Review: It took me a whole summer to read this book in 1993 and it is still the most amazing book I have ever read. If you are computer/mathematically inclined, have an interest in biology, and have enough time to digest it, this book will blow you away. It contains the most amazing hypotheses to come out since 1859. Unfortunately, it takes a huge investment in time to really read this book, but an epiphany awaits those who get through it.

Rating:
Summary: Hopeful spontaneity
Review: Kauffman believes that spontaneous self-ordering, which both simple and complex systems can exhibit, must be incorporated into evolutionary biology, along with traditional random variation and natural selection. Certain complex systems will be spontaneously self-ordering. Natural selection then tends to push such systems to the edge of chaos. In addition to advancing Kauffman's theories, this reference provides a good overview the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, a review of origin of life theories, a review of genetic regulatory theory, and a review of cell differentiation.

Rating:
Summary: The science book to read. Six stars at least.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The science book to read. Six stars at least.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Universe a point in 6n space
Review: The deep future will see this as a very important book. The first to consider the deepest layer of reality. Anyone interested in GA's or ANN needs to start here. This book is pure foundation. Stand on it and you stand on solid ground.

Rating:
Summary: New paradigm shift in biology
Review: The Origins of Order will be viewed in the future as a milestone in shifting the existing Darwinian paradigm in biology from a "survival of the fittest" (natural selection) to a new paradigm focused on explaining the "arrival of the fittest" through self-organisation.
Using a boolean (NK) network model and a extensive amount of biological facts, Stuart Kauffman demonstrates in a powerful
way the central role of self-organisation in the creative process of life. His vision that biology seems to operate
as self-organised non-linear dynamical systems at the edge of chaos will have as much influence in biology that a similar vision offered by Nobel prize winner Prigogyne in the field of thermodynamcis. The book connects a web of fundamental ideas from the fields of biology, physics, mathematics and computer sciences and requires a strong background in biology that I unfortunately did not possess. The laborious style, the lack of clarity in the writing and the (unnecessary) length of the book should not stop anyone from reading this amazing book.
Stuart Kauffman combines an intellect and a vision that only very few scientists possess. This book is a must.

Rating:
Summary: Not sure what the fuss is about
Review: There are some interesting subjects in this book such as the theory that estimates the size of the attractors for NK automata. These results are non-trivial but I do not see where the grandiose claims about life living on the 'edge of chaos' come from. Maybe in a few years someone might be able to put some more flesh on his hypotheses but right now they seem to be flights of fancy extrapolated from some trivial models that don't actually do anything.

Rating:
Summary: Not sure what the fuss is about
Review: There are some interesting subjects in this book such as the theory that estimates the size of the attractors for NK automata. These results are non-trivial but I do not see where the grandiose claims about life living on the 'edge of chaos' come from. Maybe in a few years someone might be able to put some more flesh on his hypotheses but right now they seem to be flights of fancy extrapolated from some trivial models that don't actually do anything.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent ideas about self-organization's bias on Evolution!
Review: This book redirected my entire senior year at college; I had to write my thesis on this material. "Stu" is a great writer whose enthusiasm is contagious, and the subject matter is incontestably top-notch: in OoO, the idea is presented that natural selection is constrained by self-organization, and because of this, there are certain general parameters in which living systems are expected to fall, that are equally manifest in models of dynamic systems, which Stu has modeled. On a personal note, Stuart Kauffman is also a charismatic and winning personality; I had the opportunity to meet him in Santa Fe, after undertaking my own research in this field.