Brian Goodwin (1931–2009)

If you’ve ever seen an array of beetles in a natural history museum or gone snorkeling, you have no doubt marveled at just how complex biology can be. There are millions upon millions of species on Earth, each following their own patterns. Those patterns encounter and interfere with other patterns to create the massive biosphere we have today. Ricard Sole and Brian Goodwin, in Signs of Life, try to parse out those patterns and how the science that occurs at the intersection of chaos, mathematics, and biology.

Sole and Goodwin’s investigation traverses almost the entire map of living creatures. From the patterns on mollusk shells to the swarm maps of invading ant populations to mutation rates in viruses to neural pathways, complexity is a large part of biological study. They even expand their research into stock market fluctuations and urban sprawl. This book is heavy in both illustrations and mathematical formulae, but you don’t have to be versed in the math to understand the concepts at hand. This book at what I would consider an advanced introductory level. The science is attainable, but the writing gets a little technical at times. All in all, a very intriguing book.… (mehr)

Not a book for the general science reader, nor a book for those wishing to learn about evolution. But if you have the basics of evolution down, and are comfortable with the science of complexity (i.e. chaos, self-organization, nonlinear dynamics), then this book has many interesting ideas.

His basic argument is that Darwinian natural selection does not adequately explain the origin of species. Organisms are more than just their genes, and he gives several examples of the growth and life cycles of organisms (morphogenesis) that apparently have little to do with the organism’s DNA. Rather the organism is seen as a complex system of parts that work together to create a higher order of organization. In fact there are many systems that display self-organization, and

“.. similar patterns of activity can arise in systems that differ greatly from one another in their composition and in the nature of their parts. It does not seem to matter much whether we are dealing with chemical reactions, aggregating slime mold amoebas, heart cells, neurons, or ants in a colony. They all show similar types of dynamic activity - rhythms, waves that propagate in concentric circles or spirals that annihilate when they collide, and chaotic behavior. The important properties of these complex systems are found less in what they are made of than in the way the parts are related to one another and the dynamic organization of the whole—their relational order.” Pg. 77.

Furthermore

“... there is a radical unpredictability in the dynamics of these nonlinear systems, which are always open to unexpected novelty. This is the creative process, which expresses itself at the level of structure in the extraordinarily diverse and varied morphologies of species.”. pg. 114

Goodwin is not trying to replace Darwinian evolution as much as adding additional mechanisms that adaptation can work on. Self-organization works hand-in hand with evolution.

Goodwin mentions in the acknowledgments that his long time friend Stuart Kauffman has reached many of the same conclusions. I’ve read several of Kauffman’s books and would recommend “At Home in the Universe” over Goodwin’s book. Both books address a common theme, but I think Kauffman's is more enjoyable and I found Goodwin's writing style needlessly technical at times.… (mehr)