Science as a Process
Excerpts of Reviews

Description fromThe Reader's Catalog
"In Science as a Process, [David Hull] argues that the tension betweencooperation and competition is exactly what makes science so successful....Hulltakes an unusual approach to his subject. He applies the rules of evolution innature to the evolution of science, arguing that the same kinds of forcesresponsible for shaping the rise and demise of species also act on thedevelopment of scientific ideas." -- Natalie Angier

At Home in the Universe
Excerpts of Reviews

From The Publisher:
A major scientific revolution has begun, a new paradigm that rivals Darwin's theory in importance. At its heart is the discovery of the order that lies deep within the most complex of systems, from the origin of life, to the workings of giant corporations, to the rise and fall of great civilizations. And more than anyone else, this revolution is the work of one man, Stuart Kauffman, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kauffman brilliantly weaves together the excitement of intellectual discovery and a fertile mix of insights to give the general reader a fascinating look at this new science - and at the forces for order that lie at the edge of chaos.

From Eileen Boris - The Economist:
One of the pioneers of complexity theory is Stuart Kauffman, who lays outits rudiments in an accessible way with this challenging and audacious book. . . . Mr Kauffman likes mathematical models of proteins, genes, cells, speciesand even ecosystems. He uses the networks of algebraic logic to show how surprisingly intricate order can arise from the repeated application of a few simple rules. . . . The snag with this approach is that it is not clear how the principles of self-organisation and natural selection work together. . . . Few real-life biologists will choose to abandon their wellies or microscopes in favour of Mr Kauffman's networks, bytes and buzzwords. It would pay, however, to take him seriously. For in science, so Karl Popper tells us, truth is transient.

From Booknews:
According to MacArthur fellow Kauffman (Santa Fe Institute), "[T]he order of the biological world...is not merely tinkered, but arises naturally and spontaneously because of underlying principles of self- organization." These principles may be employed to analyze all manner of highly-involved patterns, from molecular biology, the rise and fall of corporations, to the intricate workings of government. Kauffman outlines the characteristics and potential uses of complexity, simply delineating its meaning for the future of scientific thought. For general readers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

From John Horgan - The New York Times Book Review:
{The author is} a full-time resident of the Santa Fe Institute and one ofthe most charismatic of the complexologists. 'At Home in the Universe' is a condensed, passionately written version of Mr. Kauffman's 709-page magnum opus, 'The Origins of Order' (1993). For decades, Mr. Kauffman has been performing computer simulations of abstract, interacting 'agents,' which can represent everything from molecules and genes to whole organisms and companies. He alsoforesees practical consequences stemming from his work. His simulations, hesuggest, may serve as a guide for managers of large, complicated systems, like the United States.

From Brian Goodwin - New Scientist:
In August 1966, the eminent biologist C.H. Waddington organised the firstof a series of meetings to discuss theoretical biology. . . . Waddington had never been satisfied that genes and natural selection were sufficient to explain evolution. He felt that deeper forces were at work, something to do with the dynamics of organisms and their evolution that would provide a glimpse of an underlying order in living nature, and which would allow us to articulate our deep affinities with natural process. . . . Nearly thirty years later, Kauffman has written At Home in the Universe, a book that articulates significant aspects of Waddington's intuition. Its scope is enormous and the conceptual versatility displayed is dazzling.

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Excerpts of Reviews

From Library Journal  
Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs. (LJ 2/15/97) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
 
From Library Journal - Gloria Maxwell, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas  
Why is history so dramatically different for peoples around the world? Why did some groups become literate industrial societies with metal tools while others remained nonliterate farming societies, and still others remained hunter-gatherers with stone tools? The resultant inequalities have led historically to the extermination or conquest of some groups by more advanced, literate societies. Biologist Diamond (The Third Chimpanzee, LJ 3/15/92) here combines a study of human history with science, specifically evolutionary biology and geology. His starting point is 11,000 B.C., when large differences began to appear in the rates at which human societies evolved. Diamond examines on a global scale the development of farming, domestication of plants and animals, creation of writing, and advancement of technology. He maintains that it was such environmental benefits as the availability of certain key species and plants, as well as geographical placement, that gave the advantage to Eurasia over the rest of the world, rather than any biological advantages of one race over the others. A provocative book that will appeal to general readers as well as scholars; recommended for most libraries.
 
From William H. McNeill - The New York Review of Books  
This is an artful, informative, and delightful book, full of surprises for a historian like myself who is unaccustomed to examining the human record from the vantage point of New Guinea and Australia, as Jared Diamond has set out to do. . . . He hopes, or perhaps merely wishes, to discover that environmental factors will suffice to explain European dominance. But the dozen pages he uses to "at least indicate the relevance of environmental factors to smaller-scale and shorter-term patterns of history" are thin and contain several dubious statements and at least one clearly incorrect remark. I conclude that Diamond knows a lot about prehistory and linguistics, but that he has never condescended to become seriously engaged with the repeated surprises of world history, unfolding lifetime after lifetime and turning, every so often, upon single, deliberate acts.
 
From Thomas M. Disch - The New Leader  
Liberals who have found themselves embarrassed by the pretensions of Martin Bernal's Black Athena and by the more preposterous Afrocentrist ideologues who claim that all Greek culture was a theft from a mythical 'black' Egypt will be relieved to have, in Diamond's cogent arguments, an intellectually respectable explanation for why the world ended up in its present shape. It's no one's fault, it's all geography. And I, for one, would like to think he's right ‹ yet I don't think he's entirely proved his case. The scientific bases of his argument are still subject to re-evaluation. . . . Nevertheless, Guns, Germs, and Steel is one long crescendo of inductive logic, and deserves the attention of anyone concerned with the history of mankind at its most fundamental level. It is an epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority.
 
From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly  
In a boldly ambitious analysis of history's broad patterns, evolutionary biologist Diamond (The Third Chimpanzee) identifies food production as a key to the glaring inequalities of wealth and power in the modern world. Dense, agriculture-based populations, unlike relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherers, bred chiefs, kings and bureaucratic "kleptocracies" that transferred wealth from commoners to upper classes. Such bureaucracies, Diamond maintains, were essential to organizing wars of conquest; moreover, farming societies were able to support full-time craft specialists who developed technical innovations and steel weapons. As a result, European conquerors and their colonizing descendants, bringing guns, cavalry and infectious diseases, overwhelmed the native peoples of North and South America, Africa and Australia. Using molecular biological studies, Diamond, a professor at UCLA Medical School, illuminates why Eurasian germs spreading animal-derived diseases proved so devastating to indigenous societies on other continents. Refuting racist explanations for presumed differences in intelligence or technological capability and eschewing a Eurocentric worldview, he argues persuasively that accidental differences in geography and environment, combined with centuries of conquest, genocide and epidemics, shaped the disparate populations of today's world. His masterful synthesis is a refreshingly unconventional history informed by anthropology, behavioral ecology, linguistics, epidemiology, archeology and technological development.

Back to ETSSBooks and Reviews