Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780231126625)

Why, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people's everyday existence.

Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding world. This book proposes an alternative view of evolving complexity. Bird argues that randomness means not disorder but infinite order. Complexity arises not from many random events of natural selection (although these are not unimportant) but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems--which are best described mathematically. When we properly understand the complex interplay of chaos and life, Bird contends, we will see that many events that appear random are actually the outcome of order.

Author: Richard Bird
ISBN-10: 023112662X
ISBN-13: 9780231126625
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/26/2003
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.27lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.34w x 0.96d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/15/2003 pg. 95
Choice 06/01/2004 pg. 1905