In what will certainly be one of the key works in the emerging science of complexity, Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology. It extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept ofself-organization - the first time this concept has been incorporated into evolutionary theory. The book shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order in turn is essential for the emergence and development of life on Earth.Origins of Order will advance our understanding of evolution and provoke considerable discussion among evolutionary, molecular, and developmental biologists.
Conceptual outline of current evolutionary theory; Part I:: Adaptation on the edge of chaos; The structure of rugged fitness landscapes; Biological implications of rugged fitness landscapes; The structure of adaptive landscapes underlying protein evolution; Self organization and adaptation in complex systems; Coevolving complex systems; Part II:: The crystallization of life; The origins of life:: a new view; The origin of a connected metabolism; Autocatalytic polynucleotide systems:: hypercycles, spin glasses and coding; Random grammars; Part III:: Order and ontogeny; The architecture of genetic regulatory circuits and its evolution; Differentiation:: the dynamical behaviors of genetic regulatory networks; Selection for gene expression in cell type; Morphology, maps and the spatial ordering of integrated tissues;
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