Apologies if this has been posted before. I am in the process of
cathcing up on my reading of SciAm - for some reason a few issues
arrived very late and very close together - and the following review
caught my eye:
"The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origins of Language.
John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary. Oxford University Press, New
York,1999 ($25).
"Maynard Smith and Szathmary are intrigued by the complexity of
organisms. "The more we know about them-their biochemistry, their
anatomy, their behaviour-the more astonishing are the detailed
adaptations that we discover. How could all this complexity have
arisen?" Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection cannot alone
account for it; that theory predicts only that organisms will get better
at surviving and reproducing in their current environment, not that they
will become more complex. The answer, according to the authors, is that
organisms increase in complexity as a result of "a small number of major
changes in the way in which information is stored, transmitted, and
translated." Maynard Smith (emeritus professor of biology at the
University of Sussex) and Szathmary (at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Budapest) call these changes "the major transitions" and cite eight
of them in evolutionary history, beginning with replicating molecules
and ending-at least for now-with the development of human language. In
explaining the transitions to a general readership, the authors provide
a clear-eyed review of a large part of modern biology."
--Darwin's theory...cannot alone account for it: hmm, this is in starkcontrast to the views of Dawkins, Dennett and others of a similar ilk -and also possibly to many of not such a similar ilk! My hope is thatthis will stimulate considerable discussion,of issues more 'on topic'than some of those we have seen recently (especially if a number ofpeople actually read the book). My regret is that I may not be aroundmuch longer to enjoy it!
/Gary
--Real Programmers always confuse Christmas and Halloweenbecause OCT 31 == DEC 25 !