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Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought
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Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought Hardcover - 2003

by Richard Bird


From the publisher

Why, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people's everyday existence. Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding world. This book proposes an alternative view of evolving complexity. Bird argues that randomness means not disorder but infinite order. Complexity arises not from many random events of natural selection (although these are not unimportant) but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems--which are best described mathematically. When we properly understand the complex interplay of chaos and life, Bird contends, we will see that many events that appear random are actually the outcome of order.

First line

"and the next, I will call that simple repetition. To qualify as iteration a process must have two further steps."

Details

  • Title Chaos and Life: Complexity and Order in Evolution and Thought
  • Author Richard Bird
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 352
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Columbia University Press, NY
  • Date December 2003
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9780231126625 / 023112662X
  • Weight 1.27 lbs (0.58 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.1 x 6.34 x 0.96 in (23.11 x 16.10 x 2.44 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Chaotic behavior in systems, Biology - Philosophy
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2003051637
  • Dewey Decimal Code 570.1

Media reviews

Citations

  • Choice, 06/01/2004, Page 1905
  • Library Journal, 11/15/2003, Page 95

About the author

Richard J. Bird is visiting scholar and sometime senior lecturer at Northumbria University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. He is past president of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences.
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