Rating: 
Summary: Interesting view, but running scared from complexity theory
Review: I can appreciate the attempts to argue against complexity theory, because it leads to a very different view of nature and because it does not make (and probably cannot make) very specific predictions about things. That is its beauty, however, that it leaves room for "miracles" as we would view them while still being an explanatory and predictive mathematics of great power and beauty. It is so compelling to see how much of nature complexity theory addresses that it understandably scares people who have a different vision. This book gives the impression of running scared rather than being a scientifically useful critique.This book argues, rather tediously in my opinion, that complexity theory can't explain specific information and therefore that complexity theory is not really as helpful as so many of us have already found it. We're apparently imagining all of this fruitful chaos math research, and the many hundreds citations on Per Bak's paper on self-organized criticality when it was written. Yet Overman et. al. can't see that it could ever explain the really important things. From my persepective, the arguments against complexity theory are much more competently made by the people involved in it rather than the same lawyers and such who deny it as part of their stock denials of evolution. The scientists at the Santa Fe institute have never demonstrated that they are adverse to admitting and dealing with the limits and flaws of their theories, and they improve as a result. Perhaps the most articulate scientific critic of complexity theory was John Maynard Smith, who has tried to find value in it but has found it wanting. Yet even he has recently begun to warm up to the idea. When we began to learn about nature through science, we believed that the Creator must have created a wondrous mechanical contraption. Not very comforting to think He stepped aside and left us with a big puzzle rather than being personally involved in our lives. Later, we learned that he is indeed involved throughout the process, evolution is a continuous, dynamic process full of historical contingencies and with plenty of room for miraculous events to lead to events we find meaningful. But we still couldn't figure out how the wonders around us could possibly have come from a few simple particles and fundamental forces. How could something as remarkable as biochemical cascades and the information propagating capacity of DNA have come from something else, even through the dynamic wonders of evolution ? That is the question of the day. It is being attacked by several groups. The Intelligent Design theorists make a good case for the problem, but their solution is simply to leave it to the Creator. We infer there is supreme intelligence needed to explain information complexity from materialistic physical forces. Ok, the universe is filled with a wondrous intelligence. Now what ? Does it really mean that we can simply and completely reject that this intelligence found a way to build up biochemical complexity from simpler forms ? That we can simply reject the immense evidence in a dozen fields of science for how adaptation happens in species over time, and revert to the idea that all of this (or even just DNA) was created in a single act ? As clever as it is, I[m not convinced. Enter the complexity theorists. They can explain very little in specifics, but the power of analogy is incredible. Per Bak shows that anytime we have large numbers of pieces of something, they build up to avalanches of movement. What happens in sandpiles happens all around us in nature, the beautiful recognizable patterns can be seen in shorelines, trees, possibly even patterns of shifting genes. Things certainly appear to organize themselves in nature, and this leads to great excitement that maybe our Creator was smarter than we realized, rather than leaving us a universe of randomness and accidents, it is continually guided by the very intelligence that the Intelligent Design theorists propose ... but instead of being created in one step, it is constantly being created ! That's the power of the theory of self-organization. It is so powerful that it is beginning to scare people. Might such a dynamic, powerful creative force in nature imply that our previous ideas from religion were wrong ? Might we be forced through science to accept a different vision of our Creator ? It's easy to see how the devoted followers of St. Augustine or Martin Luther could never have accepted such an idea, but I think Thomas Aquinas might have seen the beauty in it ! It leads to a very different vision of nature than we have ever had previously, but then so did finding out that the earth isn't the center of the universe and that we were descended from other species.
Rating: 
Summary: Creationism in Disguise
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book (Certainly, I received more pleasure than an evolutionist). The book was meant, IMO, to examine the possibility of life arising purely by chance, as opposed to one guided by an intelligent hand. Dean Overman has an excellent grasp on the issues, and is able to command the proper usage of scientific terms. Equally, his grasp on mathematics in explaining the issues is firm. Overman has examined many of the scenarios which have been offered up as explanations by naturalistic minds, in their endeavor to exclude any possibility of a supernatural Creator. If you are looking for a book that validates the mathematical possibility of life arising purely by chance, then you will need to look elsewhere. It is not brutal in its assessment, but rather thorough. Virtually anyone can understand the material offered in this book, even the more 'difficult' math. Overman does a decent job in keeping the material at the level of understanding of the general public.
Rating: 
Summary: Reader from Georgia
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book (Certainly, I received more pleasure than an evolutionist). The book was meant, IMO, to examine the possibility of life arising purely by chance, as opposed to one guided by an intelligent hand. Dean Overman has an excellent grasp on the issues, and is able to command the proper usage of scientific terms. Equally, his grasp on mathematics in explaining the issues is firm. Overman has examined many of the scenarios which have been offered up as explanations by naturalistic minds, in their endeavor to exclude any possibility of a supernatural Creator. If you are looking for a book that validates the mathematical possibility of life arising purely by chance, then you will need to look elsewhere. It is not brutal in its assessment, but rather thorough. Virtually anyone can understand the material offered in this book, even the more 'difficult' math. Overman does a decent job in keeping the material at the level of understanding of the general public.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent contribution
Review: Overman has written the obvious truth in the matter of self organization and accident as it relates to any origin of life scenario. What he clearly spells out in his book cannot honestly be disputed even though he humbly suggests that he is only presenting a "case" that should be evaluated by reasonable persons. Of course this subject is often NOT evaluated by reasonable persons but by fanatics and people with preconceived mind sets on one side or the other. Reading some of the reviews here I find the usual practice of building straw men and setting fire to them. Overman is not a fanatic with an agenda but he does have an ability that many scientists have long lost in the continuing debate of theism v. atheism. Logic and facts are supposed to be the realm of science but when words are twisted and redefined one can only assume that the truth is not the final goal but rather the promotion of an ideology. The facts however speak for themselves and twisting them does not change reality. The essence of the book is that biological laws do not spring "accidently" or even on purpose from the laws of physics and chemistry. Self organization of a biological system is impossible. Of course theists have long believed in miracles so I supposed that atheists are entitled to believe in them as well. The point is that miracles are supposed to be "unscientific" yet now materialistic science believes in them and they peddle their wares as if they were the latest thing produced form rational minds. The key word is "information". Information theory has nothing to do with the laws of physics except in the sense that the words printed in a book relate to those laws. Yes, DNA and RNA obey chemical laws quite obediently and so does the chalk that the teacher uses to write her lesson on the blackboard. In fact the whole universe and everything in it obeys those laws. But, DNA as it is used in an organism in real life is not organized according to the laws of physics. As an example, if we took some square blocks that were identical except that each one had a different letter of the alphabet printed on it we could soon see that we could arrange them in any order we chose and still not violate any laws of physics. Whether they were arranged to spell "building blocks" or "dingbats" the laws are not violated. DNA is arranged the same way. It contains useful INFORMATION. The laws of physics have nothing to do with that arrangement. DNA can be ordered in any arrangement just like the blocks, and still obey chemical laws. The information comes from somewhere but not from the laws of physics. It cannot arrange itself accidently into any meaningful order because the information must be interpreted, translated and actually used in a practical way in order for life to come forth. Time is the worst enemy of the materialist fanatic. He does not have infinite time for his monkeys to type endlessly on their trillions of typewriters. He is limited by the age of the universe and by constraints brought about by extreme temperatures and so forth. Only one who believes in miracles can believe that the volumes of specified and instructive information contained in even the simplest conceived biological cell came about by accident. And evolution cannot help him because the information is the essential ingredient of life and must exist before evolution can even operate! The catch all phrase "evolution did it" does not work here. The fanatics will have to try another catch phrase now in order to perpetuate their delusion that there is no God except evolution. Of course the latest thing now is "the edge of chaos". There are interesting books on this with interesting pictures. Some (like Richard Dawkins) apparently think that if you give your audience clever computer generated pictures they will think that you have actually produced life without all of the mess. Dawkins is more of the "evolution did it" crowd however. He is now being left behind by the "chaos theory" people. Of course they cannot produce information of the type in question either but the pictures are pretty anyway. In a nut shell, all of these new ideas brought forth by people playing with computers ignore the source of information. They happily punch their keys and create their programs with their own intelligent input and their "simple rules" and still they cannot produce information but only order. Of course even the wind can stack our blocks into some type of order. But that order has nothing to do with meaningful information that is produced by the teacher writing on the blackboard or the child who arranges the blocks to spell out "information is not physics!" There is much more to the book and it is written so that people can understand it without resorting to bind faith in the opinions of experts who for some reason do not care for the idea that there just may be a God and they may not be one.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent contribution
Review: Regardless of one's religious faith (or lack thereof), one has to admit that the worldview of the 19th/20th centuries is aging badly. The belief that all of reality is mere matter and that random, undirected processes produce complexity has been battered by advances in just about every discipline one can think of: mathematics, Physics, chemistry, genetics, information theory, and even Psychiatry (e.g., Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz's discovery that OCD patients are able to use their minds to re-wire their brains) have left the 20th century's mechanized world view in tough shape. This book is a good primer about the logical fallacies of the old world view. Randomness simply doesn't produce order without the prior existence of information and a directed process. There is no mention of God here; if you are a resolute atheist, like the reviewer from "USA," feel free to propose a universe guided by aliens from another dimension. But whatever one's philosophical persuasion, one simply can't defend the old world view by calling its critics "religious." This is an excellent book to get a feel for the problems with materialism. What will take its place in the future remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: we are on the verge of a massive paradigm shift that dwarfs anything else that ever rocked the intellectual world.
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Summary: McGintry may review too many books without reading them
Review: Sometimes you've just got to read what the guys on the other side of the fence are saying. The antidote to this book is Dawkins' 'The Blind Watchmaker', and of course, vice versa. However, I have seen with my own eyes self-orginization work. I have seen simulated evolution work. Anyone in doubt should search the web and take a look at Karl Sims' artificially evolved swimming fish... you will instantly recognize them as life. This book was a lot of work, but ultimately, it is just wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Not a chance!
Review: The Darwin debate seems to attract lawyers, as well it might. Macbeth's Darwin Retried, Johnson's Darwin on Trial, now Overman's book on the issues of chance and self-organization in theories of evolution. This book is a razor-sharp and welcome addition to the literature on the statistical critiques of evolutionary hypotheses. From there the book embarks on a challenge to theories of self-organization, and various issues of the fine-tuning argument. The case against self-organization, with its distinction of order and complexity, is very provocative and correctly indicates the way in which the mechanization of 'information' in much of the theory of information fails to really explicate its place in a true theory of biological systems as meaningful. There can be no doubt this critique puts the proponent of self-organization in a tight spot, from which he must plead for mercy, and a time extension. Something like self-organization seems right, yet no such theory as yet is able to bypass Overman's objection.
Rating: 
Summary: If you accept the working premise, I guess it makes sense
Review: The problem I have with this book is the assumption that "accident" and "self-organization" equal the same thing. Can't help but wonder, if it's so statistically improbable that molecules could form (and, by the way, the better arguments in favor of this proposition are conveniently glossed over), where did God come from? (Talk about statistically improbable...)
Rating:
Summary: If you accept the working premise, I guess it makes sense
Review: The problem I have with this book is the assumption that "accident" and "self-organization" equal the same thing. Can't help but wonder, if it's so statistically improbable that molecules could form (and, by the way, the better arguments in favor of this proposition are conveniently glossed over), where did God come from? (Talk about statistically improbable...)
Rating:
Summary: outstanding book, well worth reading
Review: This book is very well written in a clear style that is enjoyable to read. It is technical in its details, which for me was a plus. The treatment of the standard evolutionary myth of how life arose from non-life is quite illuminating. In response to the Dec. 7 review, the probability of throwing a seven in a game of dice is 1/6. The total number of outcomes for throwing the dice is 36 and not 22. The fact that I throw a "one" first and a "six" second is to be counted seperately from the case of throwing a "six" first and a "one" second, even though they make look like the same result. There are six possibilities on the first throw and six on the second, for a total of 36 possible outcomes. The number of outcomes for "seven" is six (1,6) (2,5) (3,4) (4,3) (5,2) (6,1). With six possible outcomes equalling "seven", and 36 total possible outcomes, the probability is thus 6/36 or 1/6. Maybe you should reread the book and learn a little more on probability theory.
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