How the Leopard Changed Its Spots
The Evolution of Complexity
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- $41.99
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- $41.99
Publisher Description
Do genes explain life? Can advances in evolutionary and molecular biology account for what we look like, how we behave, and why we die? In this powerful intervention into current biological thinking, Brian Goodwin argues that such genetic reductionism has important limits.
Drawing on the sciences of complexity, the author shows how an understanding of the self-organizing patterns of networks is necessary for making sense of nature. Genes are important, but only as part of a process constrained by environment, physical laws, and the universal tendencies of complex adaptive systems. In a new preface for this edition, Goodwin reflects on the advances in both genetics and the sciences of complexity since the book's original publication.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Arguing that Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot explain the emergence of distinctive species, British biologist Goodwin proposes an alternative theory of evolution. He views organisms as dynamic systems, themselves the primary agents of creative evolutionary adaptation and change that occurs in a matrix of relationships with other members of the same species. Instead of DNA as the carrier of inherited, survival-promoting factors from parent to offspring, he posits that ``inherited particulars''-nucleic-acid sequences of DNA or specific structures of the parent organism-get transmitted, thereby generating form. As an organism matures from egg or bud to adult, characteristic types of order emerge from the chaotic interactions of genes, molecules and the environment, in his hypothesis. Goodwin buttresses his rigorous presentation with computer modeling and mathematics. His noteworthy, if complex, model implies that cooperation and webs of relationships play as important a role in evolution as competition, inheritance and the struggle for survival.
