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109 of 114 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a mathematical explanation of life, March 23, 2000
The basic idea of Kauffman's book is that the complexity we see in nature (including life or technology) is contingent to math, i.e. can be explained and predicted by mathematical reasoning. The same is true of statistical thermodynamics and evolution. He states that Darwin's evolutionary theory explains only how complex life emerged from simple life, but it does not explain how simple life emerged from matter. There is probably a larger jump in complexity from matter to the first simple cell, than from that simple cell to a modern human being. Darwin does not explain that first jump. Kauffman doesn't either even though he is convincing in showing that life must have started through autocatalytic sets of molecules. He points out that these sets are self-organizing, stable and can vary as a reflex to external stimuli. What he mentions, but does not explain, is that autocatalytic sets can (or must) self-reproduce, a necessary step before evolution sets in. On page 66 of the paperback edition he states that "such breaking in two happens spontaneously as such [auto-catalytic] sets increase in volume", but, maddeningly, he does not explain how or why. One has to wonder: if life is such a necessary result of matter (therefore the title "at home in the universe") why then has it proven so difficult to synthesize anything approaching life in the laboratory? He doesn't say.The book is full of incredibly interesting ideas. He explains ontogeny (the transformation of a fertilized egg to a highly complex and differentiated organism) using a simple model of on/off enzymes which allows him to build a Boolean network in which different cell types correspond to different "attractors", which are intrinsic in such a network. He shows that the same relationship that holds between number of attractors and size of a network, also holds between number of cell types and size of DNA of a wide range of organisms. Very impressive. He goes on to discuss things like fitness landscapes and genetic algorithms, the edge between boring order and supracritical instability where the really interesting stuff happens, the co-evolution of coupled systems, the structure of efficient companies or countries, and more. The only criticism I have is about his poetical language that does indeed resemble fluff; anyone who even partly understands his ideas would be excited enough without all that sauce. Also I missed a deeper development, the book does point into one interesting direction and then jumps into another matter, leaving one hungering for more. But maybe this is the author's intent. This is an excellent book even though it resembles more a symphony of ideas than a theorem. Very highly recommended: a mind opener.
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55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Let's not get carried away..., January 19, 2000
...in either direction, for or against this book. Extremely high variance reviews are a good sign that reviewers are posting their own preconceptions, rather than reactions to this book.There is a lot of good stuff in here. The descriptions of the patch procedure and simulated annealing, for instance, are very nice. This book can be useful to the motivated general reader, and to a scientist who wants to see the very basics of some novel ideas. It can also be useful for those familiar with complexity as an account of how different pieces fit together. It's important to remember that the book is not a text in, say, biochemistry. Rather, it's about a way to see the world. At this stage of the idea development life cycle and in a basic treatment like this, it would be counterproductive to insist that these modeling tools reproduce everything we know or start at the level of complication of a mature science. If the book deals in toy examples that relate to a different view for pieces of the world and how they relate, it has done most of its job. On the other hand, the book definitely has the mildly unpleasant tenor of a popularization. So, for example, any new idea is dressed up as revolutionary. Kauffman is actually better about this than many authors, especially in this field, but it's still palpable. It is also written with all the mid-'90s euphoria over complexity. It is not clear that it will take as far as the gurus envision, but it is fun to think about -- and this book is a good way to start.
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book had to happen, December 15, 1999
I read this book when it first came out. At the time I thought it made some profound insights that would surely change the face of evolutionary theory. Of course not having a professional involvement in these matters, I considered the possibility that I had just succumbed to a layman's tendency to too easily say, "Wow!" For a year or two, when I talked about this book and its ideas to friends professionally involved in the biological sciences, they often reinforced that initial concern of mine, but the idea just wouldn't leave my mind no matter how much I doubted myself. To me these ideas presented in this book stand to become new landmarks in thinking about evolution and biology.In the years since, evolving reaction to Stuart Kauffman's ideas have finally provided some measure of confirmation to me of these initial impressions. Evolutionary biologists have started to deal with these ideas seriously though I think much of the community has yet to realize their significance. This book has not proved just the flash in the pan that many pop science and psuedo-science ideas and books do. It only becomes more important with time. His ideas earned some serious treatment from Daniel Dennett in his profound book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea." Though I think Dennett only vaguely grasped the importance of the ideas, he clearly did not place them in the same league with the nostalgic crackpot evolution "debunkers." Kauffman proposes no magical "skyhooks" here. If evolution through natural selection reveals the universal acid, then the emergent "order for free" of thermodynamically open systems reveals the universal base, and promises to change our understanding of the universe in every bit as profound ways. Put them together and you get the salt of life. Kauffman's ideas in his books ("At Home in the Universe" for the layman, and "The Origin of Order" for the more technically minded) anticipate the shenanigans of the currently most popular evolution "debunker," Michael Behe, in "Darwin's Black Box." (see my Amazon review of that book as well). Behe will never escape the fact that Kauffman's work came before his, and that he failed to properly and honestly deal with Kauffman's ideas, preferring instead to pretend and imply that Kauffman represented some dismissible fringe crackpot. If he had addressed Kauffman honestly, his own thesis would have proved irrelevant, and his whole book would have had to deal with Kauffman. Behe claimed to base his ideas on some ad hoc concept of "irreducible complexity" which he invented in total disregard of whole fields of research, both Kauffman's and others', already done on the phenomena of complexity. Kauffman's theories of emergent order for free, and complex systems do not overturn the theories of evolution through natural selection. Some in the field of biological evolution have mistakenly believed that represents the intent of Kauffman's theories. In his book he clearly states that they do not. His ideas present a natural compliment to evolution through natural selection. Though Kauffman makes a few passing references to "God," these references have nothing to do with his theories and only serve literary purposes. Perhaps this reflects some awareness of the cultural not to mention scientific minefield he walks through. Intelligent design plays no role in Kauffman's ideas, and his ideas should play no role in intelligent design hypotheses either. In the end Kauffman's theories put to rest the orthodox evolutionary picture that life and humanity represent an "accident," glorious or otherwise as well as our understandable intuitive objections to that picture. Life, even intelligent life, while not necessarily guided by a divine intelligence, has a certain inevitability to it. If we didn't happen, something very similar to us would have happened eventually somewhere. The mystery of initial biogenesis clearly unravels with Kauffman's revelation of the mathematics of autocatalytic sets and their inevitable emergence in thermodynamically open complex systems. If the jargon of the previous sentence confuses you, do not despair. Kauffman does a wonderful job of walking the reader through all of these concepts so that his ideas become accessible to both the layman as well as the expert. If you made it through high school science, you can make it through, "At Home in the Universe." Kauffman takes some time at the end of the book for philosophical musings which serve as a great reward to the reader who gets there. Among other things at the end, while musing about more cultural applications of his ideas, he talks briefly about Dawkin's idea of "meme" (introduced in "The Selfish Gene") several years before it became such a popular idea with Richard Brodie's "Virus of the Mind", Aaron Lynch's "Thought Contagion" (both published at about the same time), and most recently Susan Blackmore's "The Meme Machine." Don't miss this book. It presented the cutting edge at the time he wrote it, and it promises to stay on the cutting edge for decades to come. It only stands to become sharper with time, because Kauffman has far more than just hyped lay enthusiasts like myself behind these ideas. This book had to happen. If not by Stuart Kauffman, then somebody else sooner or later. As Daniel Dennett would say these ideas represent eventually forced moves in the evolutionary space of scientific theory. I feel fortunate that someone as accessible as Stuart Kauffman made them.
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by Stuart A. Kauffman
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