How the Leopard Changed Its Spots : The Evolution of Complexity (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Something very curious and interesting has happened to biology in recent years..." (more)
Key Phrases: wavy flagella, curly flagella, genocentric biology, Golden Section, Monkey Puzzle, Santa Fe Institute (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 275 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691088098
• ISBN-13: 978-0691088099
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #612,935 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well I've changed my spots!, June 21, 2002

By	Dr. Leslie Brown "Doc Brown" (Tenerife, Spain, Canary Islands.) - See all my reviews

The main theme is about how DNA doesn't need to provide information in every detail to produce an organism. Chemical, physical and mathematical forces also play a significant part in the production of an organism. The book is also about how natural selection is not the only process at work for evolutionary advancement. I totally agree with the conclusion, and he's sure changed my thoughts on the subject, but it was a challenge to read it all because of the way it is written. It could have been more fun.

For the others that read this book and still don't get "how the leopard changed its spots" - its a metaphor. Leopards aren't supposed to change their spots. The leopard symbolises scientists like Richard Dawkins and others who are fixated with genetic evolution and DNA. After reading this book, will they change their ways? Its not about leopards!

It does have loads of fascinating examples, with all the relevant diagrams & figures to make the point clear, so he's done a good job assembling all of those. From ant colonies & the BZ reaction, to evolution of the eye & fibrillation in the human heart. An example: it is the concentration of calcium that causes the single celled organism (Acetabularia) to grow to a particular shape, NOT the DNA. He also explains why a sunflower seed head forms a spiral, and it is all to do with mathematics, nothing to do with sunflower DNA.

The trouble with this book is that the author uses the word "dynamic" waaaay too much. It quickly becomes very annoying. He is obsessed with that word. Open the book at random, and you will see what I am talking about. Aside from that, it is very tedious to read. Instead of making the ideas easily understood, it seems Brian Goodwin goes out of his way to make it complicated.

I'd really like to give it 3.5 stars, because at the end of it I was glad I read it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone, because there are better books out there (you might like to see my other reviews on popular science books). Remember that you can only read a limited number of books in your lifetime, and this one is not perfect. Buy it ONLY if you're specifically interested in this field of science OR you've read all the truly good books out there and want to lower your standards a bit and still keep reading popular science!

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A different view of evolutionary biology, September 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity (Hardcover)

Standard evolutionary biology assumes that the patterns of evolution observed in nature are mainly the result of historical contingency and natural selection. This book introduces a rather different perspective, showing that there are many fundamental dynamical constraints operating in natural systems. Natural selection acts on this restricted number of possibilities, which are in the end the main forces in shaping our biosphere. A very recomendable reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pattern formation in complex systems, August 8, 2008

By	A. Panda (Guadalajara, Mexico) - See all my reviews

This book is an easy and interesting reading about morphogenesis, which if I understood correctly, is a new branch of biology that tries to explain things that cannot be explained through genetics or evolution alone. It does not contradict existing knowledge or Darwinism, on the contrary, it seems to build on genetics in a beautiful way to complement it.

For example, after cutting off the nucleus from a one-celled algae named acetabularia, its corolarium still grows from the stem. Afterwards, the algae cannot reproduce itself or even synthesize more proteins (since DNA with all its genetic code for producing proteins is located in the nucleus and is therefore gone) and acetabularia dies. The author suggests that the "information" to generate the corolarium in its precise form might be the result of chemical and physical properties of some minerals in the stem, not of genetic instructions (since these are not available anymore at the time the corolarium develops). He is not claiming that genetic instructions are not vital (acetabularia dies when the nucleus is removed), he is just saying that development, specially the "form" could depend on physical and chemical properties of the medium inside the cell (in the end, this medium is also determined by DNA and genetics).

I have read that if you introduce with surgery mother cells into a mammal's brain, new neurons are formed from the mother cells. (For further reference see A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain). Why not liver cells? There must be some physical or chemical signal in the medium, be it electrical signals, radiation, vibration or resonance, chemical reactions, temperature, pressure, magnetism, a morphogenetic field (which I understood as an intrinsic pattern arising from the mix of substances in the medium; the word morphogenetic just because this medium creates or originates a pattern or form specific to the species) or whatever other signal you might think of, to tell the newcomer: "hey, you are inside a brain", so that it becomes a neuron and not a liver cell.

I would think that in order to rule about every little detail of development, there should be a lot of genes in our genome (which in fact there are), but geneticists were expecting to find a lot more than what they really found when Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA. So why shouln't DNA accept a little help from other friends inside the tremendously complex living organisms? Why should it be responsible of everything? A probably complementary approach can be found evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo), as described in Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo).

The explanation of pattern formation even in chemical reactions was extremely interesting, it opened my horizon to look for more information on pattern formation in complex systems. (Complexity, chaos, etc.) If a book is able to make you wish to know more about a topic, it is definitely a 5 star book. Good translation into Spanish by Tusquets /Metatemas by the way.