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About this book
No science has ever been done without an indissoluble link between theory and fact: facts are colored by the theoretical spectacles on puts on, just as much as theory is shaped by the results of empirical observation. Theoretical biology is a broad and rapidly growing field where this link is actually explored with passion and discipline. The chapters of this book have been chosen to give the student of theoretical biology the flavor of current exciting research in the field. The eleven chapters are divided into three broad sections: the emergence of life, the development of the individual, and the study of the interaction between individuals and species.
Contents
Thinking About Biology: An Introductory Essay (Winfred D. Stein and Francisco J. Varela) * The Emergence of Life Defining the Transition to Life: Self Replicating Bounded Structures and Chemical Autopoiesis (Pier Luigi Luisi) The Organism as a Dynamical System (Peter T. Saunders) Designing Bacteria (Jay E. Mittenthal, Bertrand Clarke, and Mark Levinthal) Structural Patterns in Macromolecules (G. Cocho, F. Lara-Ochoa, M.A. Jimenez-Montao, and J.L. Ruis) * Development and the Individual: Processes of Identity Development as a Robust Natural Process (Brian Goodwin) Generation of Morpololgical Patterns: Mechanical Ways to Create Regular Structures in Embryonic Development (L.V. Beloussov) Gastrulation and the Evolution of Development (Lewis Wolpert) Biological Organization, Coherence, and Light Emission from Living Organisms (Mae-Wan Ho and Fritz-Albert Popp) What is the Immune Network For? (Francisco J. Varela, Antonio Coutinho, and John Stewart) Randomness and Pattern Scale in the Immune Network: A Cellular Automata Approach (Rob J. de Boer, Jan D. van der Laan, and Pauline Hogeweg) * Species and Societies: Communication Among Multiple Agents Requirements for Evolvability in Complex Systems: Orderly Dynamics and Frozen Components (Stuart A. Kauffman) Modeling the Behavior of Ant Colonies as an Emergent Property of a System of Ant-Ant Interactions (L.E.H. Trainor)
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