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The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution

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If you're looking for popular science, you will be happier with the author's more readable book on the same subject, At Home in the Universe. But if you're willing to do a little more work, this is the most compelling book you'll find about how life can emerge from the natural principles of self-organization. This is a technical book. It isn't filled with equations, but it assumes at least some knowledge of basic math, chemistry, and biology. It was written by an impressive generalist whose talents seem to extend to almost everything except lucid writing, and for that reason alone, it will never receive the attention it deserves. As with all good science, this book is equal parts experiment, observation, and intuition. Computer simulations of randomly generated boolean networks are used to explore: the dyamics of evolution on rugged fitness landscapes; the tendency to react to perturbations by returning to the stable cycle or "attractor" that was active when the perturbation occurred; and the relationship among the different attractor loops within such networks. This experimental work is tied in with knowledge of biology and chemistry to explain the emergence of life, autocatalytic systems of chemicals, cell development, and natural selection. The experience was something like reading Godel, Escher, Bach but in many ways more satisfying. Whereas Hofstadter eloquently contrives a synthesis of three human inventions, mathematics, music and art, Kauffman scrawls out his intuitive synthesis based on the rather empirical fields of chemistry, biology and computer simulation. Hofstadter is looking for an understanding of how the mind networks symbols to create thought, and Kauffman, how the natural universe networks molecules to create life. But Kauffman's work is relevant to all complex systems and offers lasting insight into the mechanisms underlying cells, societies, and even thought. Whereas GEB is largely about appreciating the wonder of intelligent life, The Origins of Order is about understanding how it actually happens. I mention Godel, Escher, Bach for good reason. These book aren't for everybody. If you worked through the examples of predicate logic in GEB and learned sufficient musical notation and theory to understand his points, and if you gained some appreciation for Godel's theorem, then you should plow through Kauffman's turgid prose, risk learning a little more about biochemistry, and delight in a reawakened wonder at the universe and newfound optimism for the future of natural science.

Stuart Kauffman has an MD and is a generalist. The book deals primarily with theory and understanding of computer simulations of state driven systems of large numbers of connected nodes. It examines how such systems evolve through mutation and gives a clear understanding of the limited role of natural selection in comparison to the self-organizing forces at work within such systems. It examines the meta-interaction of sub-systems of interacting states (attractor basins) that occur within a system. In English: it gives the first theoretical framework for understanding just how it is that cells which all contain identical DNA express themselves as some number of stable cell types. Normally a cell will react to a perturbation in whatever way will return it to its base stable cycle (attractor loop). One type of cell turns into another type when just the right perturbation kicks the system from one attractor basin into a different attractor basin.

This is heavier reading than his popular science book, At Home in the Universe, but preferable for anyone with the necessary tiny amount of knowledge of genetics and logic operations. There are few equations of any kind. The results apply to more than just biological systems.

The book is long because instead of just presenting a few principles that you can try to remember abstractly, he leads you through all the important steps of his research and gives you a real feel for how complex systems actually evolve and operate. The book raises more questions than it answers, as it should be for a book of such originality and importance.

When you fully grok the contents of this book you'll be so excited you'll want to rush and explain it to someone else, which will be utterly impossible, so you'll probably have to lend them your book, buy them the popular version, or face the fact that you are now relatively alone on a higher plane.

The Origins of Order will be viewed in the future as a milestone in shifting the existing Darwinian paradigm in biology from a "survival of the fittest" (natural selection) to a new paradigm focused on explaining the "arrival of the fittest" through self-organisation.
Using a boolean (NK) network model and a extensive amount of biological facts, Stuart Kauffman demonstrates in a powerful
way the central role of self-organisation in the creative process of life. His vision that biology seems to operate
as self-organised non-linear dynamical systems at the edge of chaos will have as much influence in biology that a similar vision offered by Nobel prize winner Prigogyne in the field of thermodynamcis. The book connects a web of fundamental ideas from the fields of biology, physics, mathematics and computer sciences and requires a strong background in biology that I unfortunately did not possess. The laborious style, the lack of clarity in the writing and the (unnecessary) length of the book should not stop anyone from reading this amazing book.
Stuart Kauffman combines an intellect and a vision that only very few scientists possess. This book is a must.

It took me a whole summer to read this book in 1993 and it is still the most amazing book I have ever read. If you are computer/mathematically inclined, have an interest in biology, and have enough time to digest it, this book will blow you away. It contains the most amazing hypotheses to come out since 1859. Unfortunately, it takes a huge investment in time to really read this book, but an epiphany awaits those who get through it.

Kauffman believes that spontaneous self-ordering, which both simple and complex systems can exhibit, must be incorporated into evolutionary biology, along with traditional random variation and natural selection. Certain complex systems will be spontaneously self-ordering. Natural selection then tends to push such systems to the edge of chaos. In addition to advancing Kauffman's theories, this reference provides a good overview the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, a review of origin of life theories, a review of genetic regulatory theory, and a review of cell differentiation.

This book redirected my entire senior year at college; I had to write my thesis on this material. "Stu" is a great writer whose enthusiasm is contagious, and the subject matter is incontestably top-notch: in OoO, the idea is presented that natural selection is constrained by self-organization, and because of this, there are certain general parameters in which living systems are expected to fall, that are equally manifest in models of dynamic systems, which Stu has modeled. On a personal note, Stuart Kauffman is also a charismatic and winning personality; I had the opportunity to meet him in Santa Fe, after undertaking my own research in this field.

Stuart Kauffman (born 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He has also written (in 1995) a more "popular" version of the ideas in this 1993 book (see his At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity).

He states in the Preface, "This book is an attempt to focus attention on new themes in developmental and evolutionary biology. It is, in fact, an attempt to include Darwinism in a broader context.... Simple and complex systems can exhibit powerful self-organization. Such spontaneous order is available to natural selection and random drift for the further selective crafting of well-wrought designs or the stumbling fortuity of historical accident. Yet no body of thought incorporates self-organization into the weave of evolutionary theory. No research program has sought to determine the implications of adaptive processes that mold systems with their own inherent order. Yet such must be our task."

He refers to such spontaneous order as "order for free." He writes, "selection can be unable to avoid spontaneous order ... Order for free should shine through." (pg. 120)

He suggests the possibility, "The origin of life, rather than having been vastly improbable, is instead an expected collective property of complex systems of catalytic polymers and the molecules on which they act. Life, in a deep sense, crystallized as a collective self-reproducing metabolism in a space of possible organic reactions. If this is true, then the routes to life are many and its origin profound yet simple." (pg. 285) "(L)ife is not improbable. On the contrary, I believe it to be an expected, emergent, collective property of complex systems of polymer catalysts." (pg. 287)

He concludes in the Epilogue, "Our legacy from Darwin, powerful as it is, has fractures as its foundations. We do not understand the sources of order on which natural selection was privileged to work. As long as our deepest theory of living entities is the geneology of contraptions and as long as biology is the laying bare of the ad hoc, the intellectually honorable motivation to understand partially lying behind the creationist impulse will persist.... the capacity to evolve is itself subject to evolution and may have its own lawful properties. The construction principles permitting adaptation, too, may emerge as universals. Adaptation to the edge of chaos is just such a candidate construction principle."

If you love ideas, and especially if you have the background (and love) of biology, chemistry and (the purity of) mathematics, you will stand as Balboa did and hold your breath on viewing the ocean of synthesis Stuart Kauffman has discovered. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience- a hushed cathedral of reverence for the power of intellect and ideas. Will it make anybody rich? No. Will it engender any new inventions or household gadgets? No. What it will do is lift those whose sense of wonder is intact to that holy place where a neuron-storm-created epiphany lives.
One of the seminal works of the 20th century.

What an amazing book. It certainly puts you back in your place in the scheme of things and our position in the order of eveolution. Fantastic loved it.

The Origins Of Order is a fantastic book. Not only by it's thesis, also by it's methods.
Errors, time and competition (natural selection) is so easy in order to explain all the complexity we see.
I Spend much time in my work with complex problems in order to know all the details, collect the inputs, etc before I build a big spreadsheet and a power point presentation with my economic recommendations. Stuart Kauffman tells us other posibilities:
with a computer, some skills in programming, common sense and knolowedge of the problem build a random model of the problem, collect a lot of simulations, and analize the outcomes. Not more, not less. You don't need more.
And some times, change the computer by a pen and paper and build some equations. Not more, not less. You don't need more.