Based on a workshop held at the Santa Fe Institute in June, 1990, this book explores structure in organismsboth physical and dynamicaland presents the current status of the search for natural pathways, principles of organization, and the theory of design for organisms. Topics discussed include dynamical systems analysis; the pathways of evolution; development, physiology, and functional morphology; and the principles of dynamical change in connectivity within the networks of processes.The aim of the workshop was to seek principles of organization in organisms and a theory that could generate those principles, as Newtonian mechanics generates Keplers laws of planetary motion. The object of the theory is to explain patterns of structure in living or past organisms, or patterns to be expected in future organisms. The book proposes principles of organization that are independent of time scale and level of organization, and that make predictions about structure without recourse to micro-level details. Among them are principles of coordination, evolution to the edge of chaos, the matching of processes to constraints, and the evolution of higher-level processes as a way to surmount resource limitations. These general principles, which may be characteristic of any evolving complex system, may then be used in conjunction with properties of the specific materials and processes in organisms to understand biological structure. }
General Introduction NOTE: (each Part contains Introduction and Commentary); Physiology; The Flexible Dynamics of Biological Coordination: Living in the Niche Between Order and Disorder (C.G. DeGuzman and J.A.S. Kelso); Biological Organization and Adaptation: Fractal Structure and Scaling Similarities (T.R. Nelson); Physiology and Development; Constancy and Variation in Developmental Mechanisms: An Example from Comparative Embryology (J.A. Bolker); Heterochrony in Hydractiniid Hydroids: A Hypothesis (N.W. Blackstone); Adaptive Mechanisms that Accelerate Embryonic Development in Drosophilia; (T.L. Karr and J.E. Mittenthal); A Connectionist Model of the Drosophila Blastoderm (J. Reinitz, E. Mjolsness, and D.H. Sharp); Activity-Dependent Reorganization of Afferents in the Developing Mammalian Visual System (M.P. Stryker); A Model for the Development of the Spatial Structure of Retinotopic Maps and Orientation Columns (K. Obermayer, H. Ritter, and K. Schulten); Physiology, Development, Evolution, and Their Evolution; Homoplasy: the Result of Natural Selection, or Evidence of Design Limitations? (D.B. Wake); Preadaptation and Principles of Organization in Organisms (D.G. Stork); Critical Allosteric Brain Enzyme Kinetics as Phenotypic Microevolutionary Process (A.J. Mandell and K.A. Selz); Generic Physical Mechanisms of Morphogenesis and Patter Formation as Determinants in the Evolution of Multicellular Organization (S.A. Newman); Deletions and Mirror-Symmetries in Drosophila Segmentation Mutants Reveal Generic Properties of Epigenetic Mappings (B. Goodwin and S. Kauffman); Activity-Dependent Reorganization of Afferents in the Developing Mammalian Visual System (M.P. Stryker); Activity-Dependent Reorganization of Afferents in the Developing Mammalian Visual System (M.P. Stryker); Activity-Dependent Reorganization of Afferents in the Developing Mammalian Visual System (M.P. Stryker); Activity-Dependent Reorganization of Afferents in the Developing Mammalian Visual System (M.P. Stryker); Activity-Dependent Reorganization of Afferents in the Developing Mammalian Visual System (M.P. Stryker); The Sciences of Complexity and Origins of Order (S.A. Kauffman); Patterns of Structure and Their Evolution in the Organization of Organisms: Modules, Matching, and Compaction (J.E. Mittenthal, A.B. Baskin, and R.E.