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Dear reader, be warned: though the book in your hand is about
the glorious complexities of biology, it contains mathematics -- even some displayed
equations! -- and not all of the high-school variety. Some of it is downright
difficult, though the hard parts are sequestered in text boxes so you can read
right past them if you wish. Why should you subject yourself
to this challenge? Quite simply, because Signs of Life is one of the most
stunningly original books you'll come across for a very long time. It's no less
than a glimpse into the future of the life sciences. Ricard Solé and Brian
Goodwin, colleagues at the world-famous Santa Fe Institute, take you on a tour
of biology such as you've never seen before. The authors
touch on every major field of biology, from molecular genetics and neurobiology,
through animal behavior and ecology, to evolution, extinction and even economics.
At each level, they describe well-known phenomena that today's standard theories,
steeped as they are in a kind of worship of the gene, are powerless to explain.
Yet various tools of complexity theory can model them quite nicely. Signs of
Life, is about explaining the unexplainable -- more precisely, using new ideas
to think about things today's ideas can't help us with. For instance:
- It's generally believed that cells with identical genomes in
identical environments will lead identical lives. But they don't. Why?
- How
do such simple creatures as ants and termites manage such complex behavior as
building huge nests and moving in swarms? And why do certain ant nests show pulses
of activity that are not apparent in any individual ants?
- Classical
ecology tells us that if two strongly competitive species try to occupy a common
resource or territory, "competitive exclusion" will drive one of them
to extinction. But if this is so, why are natural ecosystems so diverse?
- Why
did all the basic body plans of the animal kingdom appear in a single geological
era, and no new ones since? Was this inevitable, or a grand accident?
Signs of Life will show you an entirely new approach to the problems of
understanding living systems. It applies the mathematics of order and disorder,
of entropy, chance, and randomness, of chaos and nonlinear dynamics to the various
mysteries of the living world at all levels. Less a set of answers than a guide
to thinking about living systems, this lively book sets the agenda for biology
in the coming century. Ricard Sole is an Associate
Professor in the Department of Physics and Nuclear Engineering at the Polytechnic
University in Barcelona, External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute, senior
member of the NASA-Associated Center of Astrobiology, and head of the Complex
Systems Research Group. He lives in Barcelona, Spain. Brian
Goodwin is a Scholar in Residence at Schmacher College and a member of the Santa
Fe Institute. His previous books include Temporal Organization
in Cells, How the Leopard Changed
its Spots, and, with Gerry Webster, Form
and Transformation. He lives in Devon, England. |
