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About this book
Contents
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Biography
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About this book
A critique of the basic tenets of Darwinism, this book argues that randomness is a means of infinite order, not disorder. It claims that complexity does not arise from random events of natural selection, but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems.
Contents
ForewordPrologue:The Dawn of Man?Chapter 1. Iteration and Sequence.Chapter 2. The Problems of Biology. Chapter 3. The Origin of Species.Chapter 4. Chaos and Dimensionality.Chapter 5. Chaostability. Chapter 6. The Geometry of Life. Chapter 7. The Living Computer. |Chapter 8. Morphology and Evolution. Chapter 9. Life, Entropy and Randomness.Chapter 10. The Effectiveness of Mathematics.Chapter 11. Life and Conflict.Chapter 12. The World as Iteration and Recursion.
Customer Reviews
Biography
Richard J. Bird is visiting scholar and sometime senior lecturer at Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. He is past president of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences.
By: Richard J Bird
322 pages, b/w illus
This thought-provoking work will be valuable reading for students and for professionals trained in ecology and evolution... it should be required reading for advanced undergraduates, for graduate student seminars, and for discussion courses on the nature of organic evolution. Recommended [for] general readers, upper-level undergraduates and above. Choice Bird reveals his philosophical, almost mystical, inclinations... Bird's book is a product of this creative imagination that grapples with the very process itself. -- Martin Lockley The Scientific and Medical Network Bird's explanation of how organisms tap the universe of archetypes is... radically ingenious. Times Literary Supplement Chaos and Life...literally challenges many of our accepted views of reality...it's extremely well-written, so that if readers are willing to make the effort, they can tread new paths of thought. -- Robin Robertson Cybernetics and Human Knowledge vol. 11 # 4 This is a formidable piece. -- Paul Johnson Richmond Times-Dispatch 9/9/05 Well written and clear, makes a strong case. Northeastern Naturalist vol. 12 no. 3