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Form and Order in Evolutionary Biology: Stuart Kauffman's Transformation of Theoretical Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

Richard M. Burian  and
Robert C. Richardson
Richard M. Burian
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and University of Cincinnati
Robert C. Richardson
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and University of Cincinnati
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Extract

Stuart Kauffman’s forthcoming book, The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1991), is a large and ambitious attempt to bring about a major reorientation in theoretical biology and to provide a fundamental reinterpretation of the place of selection in evolutionary theory. Kauffman offers a formal framework which allows one to pose precise and well-defined questions about the constraints that self-organization imposes on the evolution of complex systems, and the relation of self-organization and selection. He says at the outset that he wants to “delineate the spontaneous sources of order, the self organized properties of simple and complex systems” and to understand how they “permit, enable and limit the efficacy of natural selection” (Introduction, p. 2).2 As he says somewhat later, the central theme running through his book is that “the order in organisms may largely reflect spontaneous order in complex systems” (ch. 6, p. 224).

Type
Part VII. Self-Organization, Selection and Evolution
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 266 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1991

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Footnotes

1

This began as two papers, and evolved into a joint enterprise. The order of authors is only alphabetical. We are grateful to Marjorie Grene for arranging the symposium in which this work was presented, and for her encouragement in this project as well as everywhere else. We also thank Stu Kauffman for his patient help and discussion as we struggled to understand his views. We both benefited greatly from a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, and from the participants there. RCR is indebted to the National Science Foundation (DIR-8921837) for supporting this work.

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