How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity - Hardcover

Goodwin, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0025447106 ISBN 13: 9780025447103

Publisher: Scribner, 1994

Synopsis

Applying the laws of physics to the study of life and the growth of complex forms, the author proposes a powerful source for the origin of species and offers an alternative to modern Darwinism and twentieth-century genetics.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Goodwin is a professor of biology at the Open University, Milton Keynes.

Reviews

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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It may come as a surprise that there are still scientific dissenters from Darwinism, but here's the proof, in a book that calls on biologists to put organisms, not molecules, at the center of the science. Goodwin (Biology/Milton Keynes College, England) begins with the proposition that specifying the chemical composition of a substance tells us nothing about its form: graphite, diamonds, and fullerenes all consist of pure carbon but differ radically in shape. Similarly, where many biologists assume that the makeup of an organism's DNA tells them all they need to know about it, Goodwin brings to the table the disciplines of physics and mathematics. He applies the insights of chaos theory to the activity of an ant's nest and to children's play, to the growth of slime molds and algae, and to fibrillation in the human heart. An older mathematical discovery, the Fibonacci series (in which each new number is the sum of its two immediate predecessors), appears to play a role in the position of leaves on a branch, as well as in the structure of quadruped limbs. But as important as his specific illustrations of his points is his contention that Darwinism has taken on a rhetoric not dissimilar to the Puritan ethic, with each organism struggling to overcome a harsh world and become fitter. Eventually, he believes, Darwinian natural selection will be seen as part of a larger physical and mathematical structure, in which the entire organism, as opposed to its DNA alone, is seen in context. In the concluding chapter, he cites several biologists who are working toward a comprehensive new biology, in which the rights of organisms and of nature are set against the claims of genetic engineering and other forms of meddling with the environment. An often exciting look at frontiers of biology beyond the well-tilled fields of gene research. (68 b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Goodwin, a noted proponent of the complexity movement, bashes neo-Darwinists and molecular reductionists as holders of an untenable evolutionary view. Citing the research by himself and others, he compares life to the construct of "excitable media" and proposes that the driving forces determining an organism's form lie at the interface between chaos and order. Goodwin provides a compelling argument that an investigation of the development of complexity and "emergent properties" from chaos will yield a theory of biological evolution that will unify this process with concepts in the physical sciences and also provide an accurate means of explaining the diversity of morphologies found in living organisms. Although light on data, this is a serious presentation for the informed lay reader of the philosophical direction some avant-garde biological thought is taking. There is some overlap with Roger Lewin's more balanced Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (LJ 12/92). Recommended for large science collections.
Frank Reiser, Nassau Community Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0025447106
• ISBN 13: 9780025447103
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320