Complexity Books

1. Genetic programs involve large numbers of separate computer programs or rules, each of which is random in its ability to solve a given program.

2. The programs or rules that are the most successful in one generation are kept, mated with each other and occasionally mutated, reproduced, and put back into the fray to once again test their ability to solve the problem.

3. After time and sometimes thousands of generations that remain rules or programs are highly effective at solve the give set of problems.

4. For genetic algorithms to work, you need to be able to succinctly tell the computer the current state, which can consist of both the internal sate that acts as a form of status and the current values for all inputs, called the machine receptor. The state and receptor information is encoded in a string of digits. The values in the string are inputs to the genetic algorithm. A. Start by defining and listing the states in which the system can exist. B. Define the environmental input variables that need to available to the system. The system can only solve programs if the needed data is available to it. C. Define the range of possible values for each of the environmental inputs. D. Map the states and environmental inputs into the string.

5. Consider tic-tac-toe, the states are (won-me) or (won-you). String values are B,O,X and (M=my turn and Y=Your turn. The grid holds cells from 0 to 8 and a end cell for mine or your turn. The Input string BBBBBBBBBM could have one or more transition inputs, such as BBBBXBBBBY or XBBBXBBBBY. GA use wild card rules to solve the problem of multiple transitions. These rules act as defaults, being available for triggering when no more specific rule seems appropriate. ****B*****Y rule matches on any board configuration that has a blank in the center. "There are 57 possible 'boards' that X has to be able to respond to, and only 38 possible boards that O will ever encounter " says Paul Thiessen. Thiessen discovered it is an advantage to have the first move, 6-10 generation convergence. GA complexity can be reduced by intelligently limiting genes by observed rules. GA are not total random. Complexity is reduced by intelligently apply observed rules and rewards.

6. Solutions are the result of converging to a global min on a gradient 3d map. Mutation perturbs the system helping the GA from getting caught in a local minimum. Over time bad rules are weeded out and the program is left with the good rules. The number of rules to randomly generate depends on the number of possible input strings. The larger the number of input strings, the more rules are needed to cover a somewhat percentage of the possible values. A relatively few number of rules can handle a large range of situations.

7. Genetic Algorithm: 1. Initialize the population, P1 2. Create an empty population P2. 3. Select two individuals from P1 base on fitness criterion 4. Optimally mate and replace with offspring 5. Optimally mutate the individuals 6. Add the individuals to P2, until P2 is full. Let P1 be equal to P2.

Let me put it this way: I enjoyed some chapters more than others. The first two thirds of the book is an excellent introduction into epistemology and the problem of induction. To the lay reader without experience in such matters, epistemological issues will be brought forward in a highly entertaining and relevant manner. Many questions and ideas that I (and I assume most readers) have sometimes pondered (though not as eloquently) are articulated by Taleb here. For instance, our modern day categories appear to be arbitrary: for instance, why is that most pro-choice people are also anti-strong military? These ideas seem to have nothing to do with one another yest there is a strong tendency for these and other beliefs to be held together. What this illustrates is our innate desire to reduce complexity - and that is our problem; that is why we persistently ignore, forget, or underestimate about Black Swan events.

Taleb frequently speaks in parables. The most prominent being his differentiation between Mediocristan (governed by Gaussian probability) and Extremistan (where Black Swans flourish).
Since I know nothing about business and economics, I was surprised to learn that much of the economic modeling and predicting is based on Gaussian probability which of course is ridiculous. Taleb chooses to constantly mock the financial 'experts' for this reason. The author comes down so hard on Gaussian statistics that the casual reader may think such methods are fundamentally flawed (or an 'intellectual fraud' to use the heavy handed languae of Taleb). However the domain in which Gaussian statistics is OK is still large and important to learn. Possibly this is not the case for finance though.

The weak part of the book I found to be at the end where Gray Swans are discussed - these are events that are near to Black Swans but we have some mathematics to get some understanding of them. I found the transition from talking about White and Blacks Swans to Gray Swans to be poor. He should have spent more time on Gray Swans.

I expected some discussion of Pascal wagering but was disappointed to see only a small paragraph or two on it in which Taleb appears to misunderstand Pascal's point.

Overall, a good book to read. This has sparked my interest in the subject.

Loved it. Great thinking, fantastic perspectives..like this gem referring to Umberto Eco's library "He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with "Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?" and the others -- a very small minority -- who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market will allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books."..

And that is just one example. See the wealth of other reviews here for more. If you even think you might be interested, don't hesitate!

page 14: I still do not understand why the author thinks that an educated person is supposed to guess better than a layman about the outcome of a war. In fact any person is as much expert in that endeavor as any other.

page 21: I still can not see the relationship between war and finance in the context.


for a philosopher examining problems in induction the boundary between true/false is not well drawn.

page 44: I wonder if he is naive. What does he expect in finance business, all reasonable people?. It is finances, it is almost expected that some people take unreasonable risks(with diabolical intentions sometimes) out of greed or out of wishful thinking. These factors are often excluded from his analysis.

I guess he also confuses the word "actuarial science" with "science". He frequently uses the word "science" for "finance" that has no roots in any of pure sciences, nor there are any independent mechanisms connecting the past and present.

From a person guarding against certainty it is ironical to see evolutionary psychology in use on page 53.

page 56: While talking about negative empiricism Taleb says "If I see someone kill I can be practically certain that he is a criminal". No, by no definition of "criminal/crime", killing necessarily implies crime (e.g. self-defense), all the while ignoring the gender bias. I do not want to be a killjoy here, but when accusing people of faulty logic in one paragraph, one can not afford to make an incorrect implication right in the next paragraph.

It is weird for a self-declared skeptical empiricist to resort to psychology while attacking mathematicians.

The references are not cited in the text, though listed in bibliography, which means its not clarified which piece is taken from which reference.

When the author generally ridiculed "fitting equations to something happened in the past" he swept all of cosmology into irrelevance with one stroke of pen.

page 87: We are social animals; hell is other people. // Nice quote

page 97: Got it wrong about hippo campus. This is where short term memory is translated into long term one.


He wants to attack actuarial mathematicians most of the time but ends up generalizing to all mathematicians. As a self-declared skeptical empiricist he is skeptical about truth in mathematics, what he does not understand is that even pure mathematics has engineering applications (e.g. control of hard drive motor). Nature does, to some extent, follow mathematics. This shows lack of depth in analysis.

page 107: Taleb criticizes "hardened by the gulag": The report is probably talking about psychological hardening which is supported by a neurobiological process described in "In search of Memory" by Eric Kandel. The author assumes it to be physiological hardening and refutes it with the rat example. In the next paragraph he calls himself philosopher.


page 129: In what Taleb describes "scientific mentality that is arrogantly called Enlightenment" agrees with Samuel Huntington's claims in The Clash of Civilizations that "the orthodox people do not share with the West the principles of Enlightenment".

page 129: He shouts "Life stands outside Platonic fold". No. pretty much all of engineering and many of pure sciences lie within and are verifiable and/or testable at the same time. These fields pretty much changed the society/culture for almost a century now.

page 154: Towards the end of the page - the author's question has geography in it and it is not surprising that the answers had that too, yet he complains about it.

page 182: He wanted to dispel Ludic fallacy and here is one instance he falls right into it. Talking about left and right handedness of people he brings Plato into picture, ridicules him and then says that the left and right handedness of molecules (stereo isomerism) matters considerably in this. There is no known evidence that stereo isomerism plays a role in this and he does not present any.


What he fails to realize is that for people money is not the most important aspect of life. It is important but only after family and relationships, so even if his analysis is right(I think it is) his calls may go unheeded.

He also does not realize that people, whatever profession they are in are partly there due to financial security and not always to do their jobs perfectly. If the system is staying afloat with Guassian approach they would not need to change it. If they are shown tangible benefits with some results of the fractal analysis they may listen to the author. After all, at least some are after money.

chapter 18: He complains why philosophers are not questioning financial experts when they invest their money. A philosopher's job is not about figuring out details of finance, it is about figuring out details in philosophy which may or may not interfere with finance. A philosopher need not necessarily act upon his/her own arguments.


page 296: If what the author says about uncertainty is assumed to be truth about uncertainty(I do), even then in the authors own words towards the end of book, people may not necessarily heed his advice, especially as author says he put lots of things like culture, before truth, let alone acting on the truth.

As the author puts earlier, the Black Swan helps in getting rid of a big player and benefiting masses; so why fight (even negative) Black Swan in the first place, (for nationalists) as long the money stays within the country.

The author really does not make it clear early in the book the boundary between what he is attacking and what he is defending. Since the author mentions Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker, he can take a cue from Dawkins' books about defining the boundary strictly and at the beginning so that the reader stays focused during the reading. Only after reading half the book was the boundary clear to me.

He claims himself to be humble at times but there are times where he delivers unreasonable and unfair criticism, sometimes just jumping to conclusions, like the on page 107.

By generalizing his attacks on Platonic ideas including mathematics, Taleb ignores much of physics. Mathematics still is useful in physics, the most rigorous science.

Whether you risk manage for a living or just want to open your mind to all possibility this is a great read.

This book is good. Maybe I don't even understand how good it is. The way Taleb is writing gets to your ego; he feels so cocky. But, yes, man has a point. I started to laugh to myself and to my capabilities of "estimating" and even "thinking" while reading this book. Taleb has interesting view point to life; don't try to predict it, or forecast it, life will fool you anyway, sucker! Don't believe in your most valued economic forecasters, they don't know much, unfortunate... for them. Expose your self to "black swans", positive ones hopefully, try to make negative black swans to be gray swans for you, if it is grey one you have prepared yourself well for future. These swans are rare events in life, which take place even we would not like them to happen. Even one event can make a difference, and most likely a shocking difference.

For those with a technical interest in the matter, this is a nice soft intro to the topics with which concerned. It is written with a somewhat emotional style; probably not an ideal technical resource.

For the readers not akin to the concepts at all, the book successfully conveys a nice (and vitally important) way of interpreting natural phenomena (that of self-organisation, collective intelligence, etc.), but, through its somewhat emotional style, may create a sort of hype around the concept.

A pleasant and fast read, over-all; worth it.

The property of "emergence" is essentially the top-level or macro-level view of the behavior or intelligence of a system. The system can be an ant colony, the Internet, a nation, or any collection of individual agents or actors.

To take one example, an ant colony, can be studied in terms of the individual intelligence and actions and behavior of the individual ants in the colony. This is the micro-view.

However, collectively, the ants function together in a system (i.e., the colony). Thus, the colony can also be studied in terms of its behavior, intelligence and actions. This is the macro-view. This is the systems view. Emergent properties are the top level properties that "emerge" from the properties, functions, behavior and actions of the individual units in the system (i.e., the individual ants).

Emergence is a very important concept, especially in terms of group behavior, the world wide web and the Internet, as well as in artifical intelligence and biological and ecological systems. Emergence is also a very important concept in "swarm intelligence" and "hive" type intelligence. These are important concepts for computer science, among many other fields.

Thus the importance of this book which elucidates the concept of "emergence" by describing it in the context of several different areas of study in which it appears.

I saw Steven Johnson's lively and a compellingly fascinating presentation on the topic of the book at a conference, which inspired my desire to read his book.


Unfortunately, the 250+ pages of the book provide very little insight beyond a 30+ minute presentation. The writing style is not forceful or engaging, but rather dull and lifeless. The lasting feeling is that the author is attempting to make the book accessible to a group of smart 10 year olds by using short sentences, simple vocabulary and endlessly repeating the same ideas over and over again.

The initial excitement wears off after about first 50 pages and the impetus to try to read it would help you stumble through the drudgery of another 50 pages, but except to give up sometime soon afterwards.

I purchased this book on something of a whim; it was listed as recommended by Amazon and looked like something worth checking out. This is appropriate because software systems that make recommendations based on history and feedback are one of the topics that get discussed in this book. The concept appealed to me for a number of reasons. First, it seemed like a fascinating study of complex systems and the relationship therein between the components, the system as a whole, and that which may be greater then the sum of its parts - that which is emergent. Which in fact, for a while it was. Second, I appreciate the idea that a city is a complex system that is not dissimilar to other complex systems. And third, I felt like taking a chance on something that just sounded interesting. Sadly, after high expectations brought on by a well developed first half, this book ultimately disappoints.

Credit where credit is due, this book starts off as well as a book can. In keeping with the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, there is a wonderful illustration at the start of this book featuring a map of Hamburg dated circa 1850 next to a diagram of a human brain. Whether there is ultimately anything to them or not, the similarities are astounding. It really went a long way towards grabbing my attention and making this book one that I looked forward to reading. For half of the book, my expectations were met.

The first three chapters take the seemingly mundane and unrelated topics of ant colonies, computer programs based on slime mold observations, and city layout, and make an effective comparison. Something I really liked early on about this book was its observation that both ant colonies and cities expand with an order that suggests a central plan, when in fact the main force behind their development is the elemental units just doing the things that they do. Soldier and worker ands don't do their jobs because the queen orders them to, they do them because taking care of the queen keeps the colony alive, thus sustaining their existence. Neighborhoods don't spring up because someone issues a decree to build homes, they spring up because people have wants and needs regarding where they live. And their existence in a certain place creates a continuing cycle, almost fractal in nature, of more people with their own set of wants and needs. The concept of evolution is also thrown in, and quite effectively.

I think that the strongest point the book makes is that cities are not just clusters of people, they are patterns in time. Human beings wired the way they are seem predestined to create printing presses, newspapers, radios, communications networks, TV's, and internets. But here lies the problem with this book. This is potentially a great point, and I would argue a correct one. It's just that it comes along right at about the halfway point in the book. And after that there not much else other than words. The first half of this book does what the first half of a book should do, it develops an idea. But the development of an idea needs to lead to some sort of conclusion that contains some sense of resolution. Unfortunately, somewhere shortly after the start of chapter 4, this book lets go of all of the cohesion it so nicely developed and spins into seemingly endless and tired commentary about video games and the web. Moreover, the commentary is not very good, and becomes repetitive. By the last couple of chapters it becomes quite clear the only thing concluded will be that the author thinks that in a few more years something really significant is going to come about from recent technological changes. They always do. That in and of itself is not worth very much. In the author's defense, I did read this book in 2007 and it was written in 2000. But still, a book should say considerably more this one does.

If the second half were as good as the first, this book could have been ground-breaking. I appreciate the first half, so I don't consider it a complete waste. However be prepared for quite a let down - 2 stars.

This is a pretty good read - it moves quickly and doesn't get you bogged down in the dna of the concept of emergence. go to wikipedia, read it. then pick up a copy of this and it will provide more context and usefulness. while this may not be the 'grand slam' of books...and to some degree it may be viewed as a popular fad topic...this book is better written than many that end up in the waste bend after page 47. if highlighter markings and cryptic notes in the margin are an indicator for me then it is safe to say that i got my money's worth...and...it contributed to my ongoing pondering of this and many other esoteric terms from the science realm.

I read this book from cover to cover, not because it was required by the Formal Languages course that I took, but because it is a very good read. This book gives all the necessary details in every theorem that it proves, which can be considered both a good and a bad thing, depending on your level of knowledge of the subject. I personally believe it is a good thing, because after reading any proof in this book you do not feel skeptical if it works or not, like it can be after reading a proof that skips lots of steps.

I haven't used their online resources, and I didn't do many problems from this book, because the professor teaching the course came up with problems of his own. However, from what I've seen, they have a very reasonable collection of problems suited for self-study. Every well established field has a list of standard problem, and Language Theory is no exception. The problems in this book certainly cover most of the standard ones. Please, also be aware that although this book is a good read, it is not necessary an easy read - be prepared to invest considerable amount of time into this book.

I cannot give this book 5 stars simply because I do not think it is much better than previous editions. As a matter of fact, I think it is worse. I did not have a very close look at previous editions, but I know for a fact that they were more rigorous and formal and covered more topics. As a result of that, they were less suited for teaching an introductory course, but some of the topics they studied there are really nice. From what I've heard about previous editions though, it seems that they described several open problems, that are no longer open. So I'd suggest getting this new edition, simply because it has more contemporary information.

Some people write in their review that this book requires solid background in the area it covers. I respectfully disagree - I had little to none background in Language Theory and Complexity Theory prior to taking this course and (consequently) starting to read this book; however, I did very well in the course and enjoyed it very much. Of course, I was lucky to have an excellent professor teaching that course. If good books came with good professors that would be a killer package, but unfortunately they don't.

I have not read any other books in this field, so I have nothing to compare with, but all in all, for me it worked great and if you have a good professor and are passionate about the subject, I'm sure this book won't be a miss.

This was used as a 3rd/4th year computer theory course at my university. For the most part the book was only used for homework problems where we got help from the TA and the professor had detailed slides. But from the times I tried reading the book to understand some problems it was literally like trying to read something in a different language. This book makes no attempt to make things understandable.

The previous edition of this text was published in the late 70's (1979), and it was still in use today in many schools and Universities across the world. For good reason too, the authors of this text really nail down the concept of computability as we understand it today. It is very difficult to find an undergraduate curriculum that does not include a course in Computability or theory of computation, and that is certainly a change from a couple of decades ago where this type of study was left to the Graduate level curricula. What this means to the reader is that one can not be a Computer Scientist without understanding the concepts and theory behind what computability really means.

Things like Context Free languages and grammar are used readily in things like XML and its accompanying standards such as the DTD. So, it makes sense to update a classic text to include such topics and further illustrate to the reader that what once was a theory is now center stage of Computer Science and the IT industry as a whole.

The text starts with the classics such as an introduction to automata theory followed by languages. The authors have taken a more relaxed approach to the topics as the proofs are less formal and easier to follow. Plain text is usually used to informally proof the topic at hand, and the authors go into a more formal approach on selected proofs. This is definitely a better approach than the other texts in the same topic that proofs are center stage of the discussion and the reader gets lost early on in the process. The text is easy to read for students, and easy to explain for the instructors. I remember when I took theory of Computation for my graduate work proofs were so convoluted and difficult to read that I had to spend many of nights trying to understand what the instructor was talking about in the class.

As one would expect, the book then goes into Turning Theory and Machine with the concept to computability and complexity. Well, the good news is that the authors' approach to the topic does not change; lots of explaining of the basics followed by a more detailed formal approach to the topic. All I need to say is that I wish my text was this reader friendly! Chapter 8, Introduction to Turing Machines, sets the ground work for the rest of the text. It explains reducibility and more importantly how to reduce a problem, something I have never seen in any other text in such detail! Automata and its relation to Turing Machine is depicted in detail, so there is no gap between the topics. What is interesting is that the authors close the loop with actually talking about, for example the Halting problem, in the real world with a program.

As one would expect, different classes of problems are explored in detail with many examples (theory and real-world examples) that accompany the topic at hand. Each chapter ends with a summary of topics discussed followed by a set of exercises. There are also a number of exercises at the end of each section in a given chapter in order to reel-in the topic for the reader.

All and all, this is one great text on automata and computation theory. It is easy to read and follow for the students without the loss of content. The authors relate abstract concepts to real-world examples to further illustrate the importance of the topic at hand.

This book is a one stop solution to your theoretical computer science needs (at least, as an introduction). If you're interested in language theory, deterministic / non deterministic finite state automata design, grammars and regular languages, computational complexity (temporal and spatial complexity), this the book for you. The formal notation used in the book is not the heaviest ever seen for this kind of subject, so it remains comprehensible (assumed it's not your first exposition to this discipline). I found it particularly interesting starting from chapter 8, when it covers turing machines, indecidibility in chapter 9 and intractability in chapter 10.
All in all, it's a good introduction to these concepts. I give it 4 stars because some proofs could have been easier, but this is not a big problem. The P and NP classes of problems are wonderfully explained. We are speaking about a book every computer scientist out there should have on his/her shelf. Those who consider this book extremely hard and difficult is because of their lack of fundamental knowledge in computer science. Of course, this is not the first book you should read on the subject. But be assured, this book will give you what it promises: a good knowledge about languages theory, indecidibility and intractability of problems.

I've heard that the first edition of this book is a classic. Reading the second edition, I can kind of see that -- occasionally there will be a stretch of 5 pages or so that is wonderfully clear, concise, and informative.

But overall, this edition is a disappointment. The explanations tend to be mechanical and unhelpful, and are sometimes confused or just incorrect. New sections on mathematical foundations and applications have been added, but there isn't really adequate space devoted to covering either topic, and the results are so rushed and lacking in context that I can't see those sections being useful to anyone who would need them in the first place. Finally, this edition needs to be proofread for correctness! It contains numerous mistakes, some of them in the presentations of key proofs.

Before I begin my review proper, I have this caution for the "one star" denigrators: when you call someone who is obviously a brilliant, educated, thoughtful, and careful thinker (such as Behe, Meyer, Wells, and Dembski) a fool, the only sensible conclusion one can draw is that the fool is the one writing the review.

Now for the review: Until I read this book, my position in the ID vs. Darwinism debate was that the neo-Darwinian synthesis was basically dead--it simply lacked the ability to explain the complexity and variety of the millions of life forms on earth (or even the variety of cells). I arrived at this conclusion after having read Michael Denton, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and a couple of essays by Dembski. However, I felt that the issue of design would be better left outside of science. In other words, I believed that science should limit itself to what can be known about the material world. The proper (and honest) stance of science on the subject of the origin and development of life thus should be: "Science has no explanation of how it began, nor any explanation of how it evolved." Then everyone who had an interest in the subject could form their own conclusion regarding whether life (and the Universe, for that matter) has been designed by an intelligent agent or not.

Having read No Free Lunch, however, I have changed my mind. Dembski has convinced me that the conclusion that something has been designed or engineered is among the valid inferences that can be drawn based on empirical evidence, along with the conclusion that something was the result of chance or the operation of natural law.

The central concept of the book is Complex Specified Information (CSI), which something exhibits if it has a probability less than 1 over 10 to the 150th power (a very, very small number, which Dembski arrives at based on the probabilistic resources of the entire known Universe since the Big Bang), and if it conforms to a pattern that can be specified independently of it. So although the result of flipping a fair coin 1000 times will exhibit a pattern which has a probability less than that bound, it does not constitute CSI because the pattern of heads and tails cannot be specified independently of the actual result of the 1000 tosses. On the other hand, the DNA coding for a particular protein is CSI because it satisfies both conditions: the probability is small enough, and the pattern can be specified independently (coding for that protein). Dembski makes the case that CSI is a marker for intelligent design. When CSI is present, we can reliably (and scientifically) conclude that the information is the result of the work of an intelligent agent. I won't try to recapitulate his argument here. You really need a book to do it justice, so if you are interested, I urge you to read the book.

Dembski also makes it clear that the inference that something was designed tells us nothing else about the designer. We don't know if the designer (or designers) of earthly living systems was embodied (an ET, for example, as Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins hypothesize), God, or something or someone else. Nor can we conclude much, if anything, regarding its motives. This is science, not religion.

The reason I gave the book four stars instead of five is that Dembski tries valiantly to make the fairly sophisticated math on which his analysis is based available to the lay reader, but with mixed success. Perhaps the job is impossible. (I have a masters degree in math, and I don't think I could do it.) So there are places in the book where Dembski tries to convey the math without actually giving you the math, and the result is extremely difficult to follow. Fortunately, these sections are not crucial to the argument, and Dembski gives the reader a guide in the preface on what to skip if you don't want to try to wade through the mathematically based expositions.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book are in the last chapter, where Dembski discusses the ramifications of his conclusions for science, education, philosophy, and religion.

My own opinion: These results are stunning. If Dembski's work is sound (and I believe it is), then life itself points directly and powerfully to the existence of a Creator. This will have enormous consequences for our society, our culture, and our intellectual and emotional life in the coming decades. But beware--as Dembski points out, the knowledge of the existence of an intelligent agent tells us nothing about his/her/its qualities or motives. Is this Creator the Christian God, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, the All of Buddhism, or Something Else? A great adventure of discovery awaits us, but only if we keep our minds open.

I had once remarked, in a previous Amazon.com review of another book written by William Dembski, how I was amazed by his literary productivity, observing that he had published far more books in a short span of time than either Niles Eldredge or Frank McCourt combined (I am sure that both Eldredge and McCourt would be in complete agreement.). My amazement continues in my latest review of "No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence", since Dembski has had more time writing self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design and his "explanatory filter" than conducting any serious research which could shed some light on this issue. Once more, Dembski uses some intellectually sloppy logic to contend that irreducible complexity cannot be the result of anything other than intelligence, presumably from the hand of an Intelligent Designer (He's unnamed, but for those who wish to understand who the Designer is, then you should realize that this individual is known to millions as Jehovah, Allah, Ahura Mazda, or rather, in plain English, our Christian Lord, GOD.). As another customer reviewer has noted aptly, Dembski has provided a transparently sophisticated statement of William Paley's "Watch maker" argument, which was considered, then refuted, by leading scientists during the 18th and 19th Centuries, many of whom were also members of the Protestant clergy, especially in Great Britain (In other words, "Intelligent Design" is not a bold new scientific theory, but merely, the rebirth of an outmoded, intellectually disingenuous idea which was rejected by prominent scientists hundreds of years ago.).

The arguments presented by Dembski are not only intellectually dishonest, but now, irrelevant, as determined by Republican Federal Judge John Jones in his landmark, historic decision for the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Board of Education trial; Jones concluded that intelligent design is a religious doctrine masquerading as science (It is posted online:

htttp://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/all_legal/2005-12-20_kitzmiller_decision.pdf).

Furthermore, thoughtful, reasonable conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and George Will have written lucid, brilliant columns praising the theory of evolution via natural selection, and condemning intelligent design for being an unscientific, religious doctrine (EDITORIAL NOTE: I greatly appreciate Luther Lucidity's thoughtful comments on Intelligent Design (SEE BELOW), which merely emphasize my point that it is an intellectually dishonest misappropriation of science, and a point that Judge Jones would be in complete agreement.).

There are other, more important - and intellectually sound - books available on the so-called "creation vs. evolution" controversy (Intelligent Design has been judged correctly as the latest flavor of creationism enjoying some popularity amongst fundamentalist Protestant Christians; one notable biologist has referred to it as "reborn creationism".), which I regard as more worthy than any of Dembski's self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design. Philosopher Robert Pennock's "Tower of Babel" is a splendid historical overview and philosophical deconstruction of creationism, including the best written rebuke of "Intelligent Design" which I've come across (He also covers Dembski's "explanatory filter", and demolishes it too from a philosophical perspective.). Philip Kitcher, another philosopher, published "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism" back in the early 1980s, but his arguments are still quite valid today. My friend Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God" has an eloquent critique of Intelligent Design, focusing on Michael Behe's mousetrap model of irreducible complexity which claims to bestow validity on Intelligent Design. Distinguished American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) invertebrate paleobiologist Niles Eldredge offers yet another brilliant critique of Intelligent Design in his book "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life", the elegant companion volume to the AMNH Darwin exhibition which he curated, soon to embark on a tour taking it to many of North America's and Great Britain's finest science museums. And last, but not least, Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), has written a fine textbook on this issue, "Evolution vs. Creationism". All of these books are more desirable than Dembski's "No Free Lunch". Otherwise, if you insist on purchasing this book, then perhaps you might choose to acquire instead a splendid text devoted to Klingon cosmology (Neither Klingon cosmology nor "Intelligent Design" can be regarded as scientific, since both depend on faith, not reason, to validate their principles.).

I was surprised to see this book tagged by someone named "John" (most likely the John Kwok who reviewed the book below) with 'science fiction.' Ironically, avowed atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins once stated that "this book [referring to one of his books] should be read as though it is science fiction."

This book is very technically complex with mathematics that went completely over my head. However, the fact remains that evolution does not answer all the questions that neo-Darwinians wished it did. Intelligent design provides that answer. If an arrowhead were found, an archaeologist would study it and classify it as perhaps coming from the Bronze Age. But to then turn around and state that the more highly complex DNA molecule 'just happened' by 'blind, random chance' is a huge leap of faith and seems, by all accounts, unreasonable and illogical.

Intelligent design is not simply going to go away because a few atheists and scientists want it to. A poll revealed that 51% of Americans doubt the validity of evolution. Does this mean that they are all 'stupid' and 'uninformed' as Dawkins once claime? No, it does not. It means that the evidence for evolution has not completely convinced them. Religion may or may not be a factor, since even agnostics put their trust in intelligent design. To dismiss it as being a theological or religious argument ignores this fact and reduces it to a philosophical debate, not an empirical one.

No Free Lunch, the sequel to mathematician and philosopher William Dembski's Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. Dembski explains that the Darwinian search mechanism of random mutation coupled with natural selection is incapable of generating novel complex, specified information (CSI).

This observation translates into "No Free Lunch" (NFL) theorems, which Dembski explains are inherent constraints upon natural systems. Natural Darwinian mechanisms can shuffle this information around, but only intelligence can generate novel CSI. In other words, when it comes to generating truly novel biological complexity, Darwin can have no free lunch.

Some critics have asserted that he has never applied his model for detecting design to any real biological systems. The latter half of this book debunks this fallacious objection, and provides a detailed calculation of the CSI found in the bacterial flagellum. Dembski assesses the complexity of the flagellum on various levels, including its protein parts and its assembly instructions, finding that the amount of CSI contained in the flagellum vastly outweigh the probabilistic resources available in the history of the universe to construct such a structure, absent intelligent design.

No Free Lunch demonstrates that design theory shows great promise of providing insight in the field of evolutionary computation. If Dembski is right, then the ability of genetic algorithms to solve complex problems is a function of the amount of intelligent design inputted by their programmers.

Even if someone decided to believe that evolution cannot explain every single detail about nature, there is no reason to simply fill in the blanks with some kind of god.

A lack of complete knowledge is a reason to keep studying and keep searching for the verifiable answer. To fill in the gaps of our knowledge with "god did it" is senseless and irresponsible logic.

This is a splendid book which will be accessible to readers with relatively moderate technical and scientific background. Morowitz was a professor at Yale, now at George Mason U. in Virginia. An emergence occurs when something unexpected and unpredictable occurs out of a stable substrate condition or state. It is a "wow" moment. Morowitz's research has focussed on "emergence of metabolism" which is one of the topics in the book. The author proposes 28 "steps" or "emergences" beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the anticipated emergence of "spirituality" in the human consciousness. The middle fifteen or so "emergences" relate to "life." It becomes clear that the process of going from "no life" to "life" involved a series of emergences, each so remarkable in itself that their concatenation seems incredible. Indeed, proponents of "intelligent" design by a superior being may find support here for their views. However, the author's reasoning and speculations are based on a broad understanding of both physical and life processes and the resulting story is quite persuasive that the complexity of nature can have arisen spontaneously given the passage of enough time.

In the last few decades, there have been more and more scientists stepping out into the realm of philosophical thought and tossing in their two cents regarding important metaphysical questions. On the whole, this is a good, encouraging trend.

Yet, it is becoming too predictable that a philosophy book, written in the vain of science, will undoubtedly be strong in the latter, and fall so short in the former: Morowitz's "Emergence of Everything" is yet another testament to this trend.

I do not want to be too harsh, as there are some things this book does well, so I will focus on those first.

"Emergence of Everything" discusses the new trend in scientific thinking to group things into wholes rather than seperate them into parts. This trend was realized in philosophy by the Idealists showing roots in Plato, but taking life with Kant and primarily Hegel.

He then launches into a so-called "brief history of everything;" how evolution has transpired since the beginning of the cosmos until present day. The scientific explanations are quick, sometimes dense, but well-described. He leaves nothing out--including social sciences into latter day evolutions. And in the end even tampers with some spiritual implications. My point: the overview itself is satisfactory... even well-done I suppose.

Unfortunately, that IS basically all of the book's merits. It ends there: just a string of cosmological and historical observations. Despite explicitly calling his own book a "philosophical treatise" he lends no thought, analysis, or anything beyond questioning of the form, patterns or causes of specific evolutions or emergences. Most references to philosophy are more theological than philosophical, and he regularly refers to metaphysical phenomena with vague labels such as "God's Mind."

The book is a great description of the ontological and scientific occurences of our universe's evolution, but all deeper meaning is lost. The bridge he tries to erect is admirable, but typically it has been much sturdier starting from the other side. The theoretical side of this book has been explored more thoroughly by systems theorists', scientists such as Heisenburg and Schroedinger, philosophers from Whitehead to Hegel, Schelling, and even contemporary writers like Habermas and Wilber.

Only worthwhile for its crash-course scientific chronology--even then, you'd be better off with more focused works.

For centuries, Christian Europe was possessed by the notion that the universe was placed with the human-dominated Earth at its centre. Renaissance and later, Enlightenment, scholars emancipated European thinking from that constraining idea. Earth proved to orbit the Sun, and ultimately even the Sun was perceived to be but one object in an immense universe. The new ideas pushed the deity usually held responsible for creating the universe and those thinking about it into a more distant role. Harold Morowitz is having none of that. In this compelling study of how cosmology and life are subjected to a vast form of punctuated equilibrium, he takes us through the journey of 28 Steps, each increasing the complexity of the cosmos.

He explains the phenomenon of "emergence" - through the Steps from the Big Bang to human consciousness. Able to bend with ease mainstream science along the way, he also manages to restore Lamarckian "acquired characteristics" - once thought dismissed by Darwin's natural selection - and restores teleology, the notion that life and the cosmos have a "purpose" by just existing. These are serious challenges to mainstream thinking and should deserve a look except for Morowitz' own self-imposed short-comings.

The Steps are introduced with how investigations of complexity led to probing more deeply to find simpler conditions from which the complexity arose. Today, this is called "reductionism" - which for some is an epithet. "Emergence", Morowitz says, is the opposite of reduction since it portrays how complexity arises. He will, he declares, show how emergence has and will lead to increasingly higher orders of existence. Further, he will demonstrate how to forecast where they might lead. At this point, he drops his bombshell on the reader - the future will bring a new relationship with the deity that has dominated Western European thinking for two millennia.

The Steps are carefully built up from cosmic beginnings. They are logically structured and well explained. Number 1 is "The First Emergence" - the cosmic chaos that initiated this universe. He covers the evidence of what is known from physics in a mere four pages - a testimony to Morowitz' capacity to distil and declaim well. The succeeding Steps are also the result of physical analysis - that of the chemical elements, stars, solar systems and how to fashion a planet. On this planet, divisions arose, some deep in the interior and others on the surface - most notably, the geosphere and the biosphere. When life emerges, Morowitz does a bit of a shift, telling us that his attention will be on those Steps leading to humans and their capacity for reason. One primate species' capacity for language becomes the turning point - it's the prompt for the emergence of "culture". Culture, he says, that evolution from the Darwinian form back to the Lamarckian - traits can be acquired, not just genetically transmitted.

"Matter is informatic", the author declares, and attributes that capacity to the tinkering of the deity's "immanance" throughout the cosmos. The capacity for information is vastly enhanced when humans begin communicating, sharing ideas and proposing new ones. For Morowitz, this ability has been hampered by local, selfish considerations. He believes that if more of us come to understand the string of emergences underlying our existence, we will be able to set aside those short-term considerations. The purpose of that, of course, will be the attainment of a firm linkage with that divine immanance he's been threading through his narrative. The deity of Western religions, he notes, is volitional as well as deterministic. It's up to humanity to learn to be as volitional and enter the immanance as participants. That's a tall order and Morowitz has no illusions about the difficulties involved. In effect, he wants to return to the time when humanity declared itself to be at the centre of the universe because they believed a deity put them there. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Emergence, as a scientific counterpoint to reductionism could be a dull subject in the hands of a less deft observer of the world. In the hands of Professor Morowitz the subject comes alive with scientific detail and a thoughtful perspective.

Professor Morowitz divides the history of the universe, from the Big Bang until now, into twenty-eight sections, each representing a major emergence. The number is arbitrary but useful. Admittedly, the number of emergences is vast, but the need to keep this on a readable scale is what the author does well. Some sections are more detailed than others. Professor Morowitz admits to having more knowledge in one area than another. The section on chemical reactions is his forte. It's not mine, however, the author begs the reader's indulgence and it is easily given.

This is a highly readable and insightful book on the theory of complexity. Taking emergence into step twenty-eight is a bold and welcome move. I recommend this work to all who take the long view and are in awe of it all.

The Emergence of Everything is a valuable contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. It investigates the concept of emergence and considers fresh angles of looking at the world, at increasing complexity and at consciousness. The idea of emergence provides clues as to how novelty occurs.

The author chose 28 topics to consider, 28 moments of emergence in the history of the universe. Amongst the questions and phenomena discussed are the following: Why is there something rather than nothing? The non-uniformity of the universe, the emergence of stars, the periodic table, the solar system, planetary structure, geospheres, metabolism, cells, the neuron, animalness, hominization, toolmaking, language, agriculture, the worldviews of Athens and of Jerusalem, science and religion.

The point is to use history in order to study emergence, which can generate beliefs. Emergence has a divine aspect, the Word (Immanence) that becomes flesh (Transcendence). By looking at the work of Spinoza, Einstein and others, the author concludes that our evolving minds are the transcendence of the immanent God.

The book provides stimulating thoughts and is an engaging read. Although firmly rooted in pantheism his views are very valuable and interesting. To this reviewer, however, pantheism is limiting for a variety of reasons. Further to this I would like to refer the reader to the idea of panentheism as it manifests in the works of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Krause, Dean Inge and especially Alfred North Whitehead, in particular the last mentioned's magnificent book Process and Reality: An Essay in cosmology.

Based on the second half of the sub-title (How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple), I was expecting a "how to" approach for finding the underlying simplicity in apparently complex environments. However, the book was more of a collection of articles that "report the news" versus a "how to" approach for practical application. "Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Levitt & Dubner has a similar flow, but did a much better job of providing insights on the analytics and approaches used to substantiate the causal relationships they assert.

I did find the book enjoyable from an philosophical/entertainment point of view. If you agree with Claude Levi-Strauss' that, "The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions," then you should read the book. In my opinion the real value of the book is that it may open your mind to asking better questions about the nature of complex environments. I specifically enjoyed the chapter on Cell Phone/Camera complexity and believe it's a must read for any manager of software engineers. In addition, I have high hopes that the references to other books will provide the pragmatic material I'm seeking.

In summary, if your are looking for a thought provoking piece on the nature of simplicity and complexity you will enjoy the book, but if you are tasked with making complex environments simple and looking for guidance the book won't further your journey.

Nice, but familiar.

See also SIMPLICITY by Wm Jensen, 2001. See also THE LAWS OF SIMPLICITY by Maeda, 2006.

What's next - Simplicegery?

I picked up this book with some excitement thinking that I would be introduced to some new paradigm on how to view the world, as captured by the new science of simplexity, or what purports to be the study of the way simple things can be made complex and complex things can be made simple. In the end, I was disappointed.

Maybe it's me but I just did not get how this is a new science. What I did find was a lot of very interesting and even fascinating information about how complicated some things really are; i.e. how a pencil is the sum of a lrage number of processes, events and even other complicated systems; or at the simple end, how what was apparently an insurmountable and complicated cholera outbreak was broken by the very simple act of disabling the water pump from which the epidemic was born. These things by themselves are fascinating. However, putting them together in one room, so to speak, does not a new science make, in my opinion.

The one new insight that I do concede to Kluger is the complexity curve which he introduces early on. This is, for me, a new way to look at the relationship between complexity and simplicity, but again, I'm not so sure that this visual display of a concept necessarily creates a new science.

If you liked the book Freakonomics, you'll enjoy this one. Also, economics, complexity theory, chaos theory, fractals, evolution, randomness, medicine, the arts, the humanities, politics and several others are touched upon here. Well written, well researched, and each chapter topic is concise, full of fun concepts and intelligently, thoughtfully addressed.

This book starts with a bang, and contains occasional flashes of brilliancy. The cover artwork, title, and premise are very appealing. Unfortunately this book doesn't live up to it's parenthetical subtitle of "how complex things can be made simple."

I picked this up at an airport for a good cross-country airplane read. Initially I was very happy with this purchase.

The first two chapters are very interesting, and propose some brilliant insights into human behavior. These insights, like all of the interesting facts in this book, are disappointingly unsupported by any bibliography or source references. Hopefully the publisher will consider adding a bibliography when the edition goes into paperback.

This book fizzles out around chapter 4. There are a few interesting tidbits of information in the sports-centric 6th chapter. But it never seems to pick up the momentum created in the first two chapters.

As a senior software developer I was keenly interested in reading chapter 9, which is technology centered. It's titled "Why are your cell phone and camera so absurdly complicated? Confused by Flexibility." This is where I expected Mr. Kluger to shine on the book's subtitle "How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple." In that respect this chapter was a complete let-down.

The chapter provides an overview of the development of TVs, cell phones, and software, with dips into washing machines and other gadgets. Ultimately it boils down to a list of complaints about the complexity in technology, and a suggestion that simplification will eventually come as a result of market forces.

My expectation was that some insights would be offered on HOW to make the technology simpler. Jakob Nielsen and others have done remarkable work in this arena, though we are still only scratching the surface of making user interfaces "more intuitive." It seems that the intuitive user interface is the mystical gold standard that no-one can seem to get right. But I digress...

Read chapters 1, 2, and 6 for the meat of this book. Then move on to another book in your summer reading list.

Expands on Holland's previous book Hidden Order. It presents an interesting method for understanding complexity and emergence. Highly recommended for those attempting to understand complex adaptive systems.

I just read Emergence in preperation for my oral qualifying exams for a Ph.D. in computer science and cognitive science. I disagree with many of the negative reviewers -- this book is well-worth the read. I share some frustration over this book due to the way it seems to scratch the surface. The book's strength seems to be in asking the right questions and pointing the way towards some future science of emergent behavior.

The book is too short for my taste -- in many of the later chapters Holland makes thought-provoking, deep remarks, without the follow-up and commentary that they leave me hoping for. But again, his main purpose seems to be in making people think about the issues. And he provides some formalisms that might be part of some future theory -- his constrained generating procedures (CGPs) and the variable "CGP-v" recall constructs such as the Turing machine for studying computability.

The strengths of the book lie in:

1) Discussion of the nature of modeling in science, and computer modeling in particular. This is discussed with clarity and pragmatism.

2) The beginnings of a framework in which to study emergence in multi-agent systems.

3) Discussion of the importance of metaphor/analogy in the creative scientific process. I didn't expect this to appear in the book but it was very welcome, and especially appropriate due to the role played by Mitchell's and Hofstadter's "Copycat" model (of analog-making itself) as it motivates the expansion of CGPs to CGP-v's as the book progresses.

Overall, I recommend this book highly to readers interested in the beginnings of this exciting new science, that really is in its infancy. I gave it 4 stars just because I felt like Holland had a lot more to say in the later chapters and left too much "as an exercise for the reader." I hope he does follow-on work that clarifies his vision for a future science of emergence!

After 7 years from its publication it still gives a valid and fundamental approach to the concepts of emergence and its meaning

The review says "Think of the food replicators in the imaginary future of Star Trek--with some basic chemical building blocks and simple rules, those machines can produce everything from Klingon delicacies to Earl Grey tea. If scientists can understand and apply the knowledge they gather from studying emergent systems, we may soon witness the development of artificial intelligence, nanotech, biological machines, and other creations heretofore confined to science fiction." -- What?? Like we are about to make food replicators because of the "deep understanding" that we now have of emergent systems??

I agree with the other reviewer who says the book is characteristically weak. The cover is prettier than Hidden Order. But so what.

There have to be better books on complexity than this for the average popular science reader.

Parts of this book were interesting, but overall it was much ado about not much, and what was done was often overdone (I agree with another reviewer on this point). I see that Amazon has coupled this book with Hidden Order. I can't see why. It would be like buying the same book twice. Anyway, so much of this has been warmed over so many times now that it's frankly a bit dry. I'd like to see a book that really breaks new ground in complexity without overusing buzz words or talking down to me, holding my hand through simple things. Here, the topic is more attractive than the content I'm afraid. Anyone really interested in complexity and emergence will need to go into technical details well beyond this book. Others, like me, will likely find the details that are here to be a bit tedious.

This book is about morphogenesis. If I understood correctly, this new branch of biology is trying to explain things that cannot be explained through genetics or evolution alone. It does not contradict existing knowledge or Darwinism, on the contrary. To me it seems to build on evolution in a beautiful way, complementing it perfectly.


For example, the growth of a corolarium from its stem in acetabularia is completed perfectly even if the nucleus (where DNA with all its genetic information is located) is removed. Afterwards, the plant cannot reproduce itself or even synthesize more proteins (which code is found in DNA) and dies. The author claims that the corolarium's form might occur due to the chemical and physical properties of some minerals in the stem, not due to genetic instructions. He is not claiming that genetic instructions are not vital (acetabularia dies when the nucleus is removed), he is just saying that the whole system takes instructions from DNA, but that development, specially form depend on the physical medium inside the cell and its physical and chemical properties (this physical medium is in the end also determined by genetics). So if you are a darwinist, don't worry, genetics still rules. Morphogenetics suggests that the minerals inside the cell have physical properties that have an influence on the development of the species, complementing and working together with the genetic instructions to give the organism its form, which seems quite reasonable to me.

I have read that if you introduce by chirurgical means mother cells into a mammal's brain, new neurons are formed from the mother cells. Why not liver cells? There must be something physical or chemical in the medium, be it electrical signals, radiation, vibration or resonance, chemical reactions, temperature, pressure, magnetism, a morphogenetic field - which I understood as an intrinsic pattern arising from the mix of substances in the medium, the word morphogenetic just because this medium and therefore pattern is specific for the species - or whatever other theory you might come up with, that tells the mother cell that it is inside a brain and that it should become a neuron and not a liver cell. I think this theory is easier to accept than to think that the neurons have developed a language of their own and that they tell each other "hey, you are inside a brain". ("User's guide to the brain" by John Ratey)

I would think that in order to rule about every little detail of development, there must be a lot of genes in our genome (which in fact there are), but geneticists were also expecting to find a lot more than what they really found when "cracking the genome" (by Kevin Davies). So why not accept a little help from other friends inside the tremendously complex living organisms? Why should DNA do everything by itself?

I cannot judge the truth of his theory, but to my opinion, the author gave sufficient evidence to show that at least more investigation is required in this field. I found this an easy and fluent read (good translation into Spanish by Tusquets /Metatemas by the way), I read it even quicker than I had expected.

The explanation of pattern formation even in chemical reactions was extremely interesting, it opened my horizon to look for more information on pattern formation in complex systems. (Complexity, chaos, etc.) If a book is able to make you wish to know more about a topic, it is definitely a 5 star book.

The appealing title led me to read this book but after finishing it I don't feel I have any better idea of why a leopard has spots or changes them. Not a book about evolution and heredity of leopards at all, in fact there is no listing for "leopard" in the index. Instead Godwin addresses genetics in terms of "sciences of complexity". I would need more than my casual understanding of things biological to really appreciate this book.

Goodwin and some others like to call his point a view a new theory of evolution. Call it what you will, I think it falls way short of a new theory, mostly in the body of evidence category, but also because it doesn't understand and refute Darwinian theory.

What it is, is, a collection of interesting observations that points out that not all in morphology is determined by genetics, but that "excitable systems" are responsible for some aspects of developement and speciation. To me, this helps explains the sources of randomness and arbitrary choice we see in genetic drift or in neutral adapation theory. It is an interesting new flavor in the frosting of the Darwinian cake, but it is not a new cake.

What irritates me to no end about this book is the last two chapters, in which Goodwin makes a totally unsubstantiated (and barely followable) leap to connect his work to the Gaia hypothesis. Here he becomes cloyingly sweet and politically correct in one breath, and it is here that I finally suffocated.

This book is the source of a widely circulated quote by William Dembski which proves beyond a doubt that neither Goodwin nor Dembski has the faintest idea of how evolution works.

Goodwin describes how Sol Spiegelman put some viral RNA in a test tube, along with a "replicase" molecule whose job is to duplicate RNA. He heated the RNA for a while to force the replicase to make copies of the RNA, then took a sample, purified it and used it to innoculate a second test tube. After the RNA in that test tube had been copied, he took a sample, purified it and used it to innoculate a third test tube. This continued for twenty some "generations", at which time the RNA was reduced to a small fraction of its original length and was duplicating much faster than the original because there was so much less to duplicate.

First Goodwin, then Dembski and now the whole Intelligent Design universe think this somehow shows that evolution is impossible. What it actually shows is that if RNA or DNA has no function, it won't be missed if it disappears - and 90 percent of the RNA had no function in the test tube environment. The only parts that were doing something were the parts that the replicase used to find the start and end points for its copying function.

This is made abundantly clear in the original paper when Spiegelman states that after the fourth transfer, the RNA became incapable of infecting a cell. That means that in real life, the "experiment" would have stopped right there because the shortened, defective RNA would not have been passed on.

Unfortunately, first Goodwin and then Dembski completely misunderstood this experiment and now Dembski has spread the misunderstanding to the entire religious community. They both owe the world an apology.

Brian Goodwin's book might be worth reading from the perspective that it brings a voice to a little-heard structuralist perspective on evolution. As a biologist myself, though, I have to say that Goodwin misses the mark. Goodwin's knowledge of Darwinian theory is inadequate to critique it, and his knowledge of genetics abyssmal.

Goodwin's central thesis is that organisms adapt out of a structural interaction with the environment. Sort of like a crystal forming on an icy window. Interesting idea, and perhaps with some developmental relevance, but the simple fact that two genetically different organisms placed in an identical environment (an experiment that has been repeated ad naseum since the invention of genetics) are observed to develop differently pretty much lays ruin to Goodwin's thesis.

Readers who are not scientists should know that Goodwin's ideas are tin-foil-hat fringe and lacking in both empirical support and in any demonstration that they lead to a productive research program. This is not a book to read if you wish to learn anything about evolutionary science. It is a book to read if you'd like a novel- if not entirely sane- view on biological change.

Received the book in just four days...so it was prompt service and the book was in excellent condition when it arrived. Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with the service provided and the condition of the book.

In fact, it doesn't have C++ but C pseudocode; other than that, the book is marvelous in terms of being an introduction to the analysis of algorithms. The code is very clear and almost always has commentaries where they should be. Another point to remark is that the authors frequently encourage students to deepen in advanced concepts by presenting concrete bibliography. A very good reference book, I must say.

A very good text[book] either for students or teachers.
Well written, and easy to understand. The concepts of
algorithms are well presented.

I like very much this textbook and so happy to discover it.
I teach algorithms for computer science students at Qatar
university, I used many different textbooks, but really
this is the one that I admire.

However, I regret to not have an instructor's manual for
it. I encourge deeply the authors to prepare one.

I'm currently taking a course on Algorithm Analysis, and we're using this as our textbook. At first glance this book seems like a tome of information, and extremely thorough. However, once you start to read it you realize exactly how many errors and typos made it all the way to the Third Edition. On the bright side, the appendices cover discrete mathematics very well.


Here's two samples of the errors that have poked through:

pg. 7, has a grievous error in exchangesort:
for(i=0; i<=1;i++)
That's obviously incorrect. It should be i<=(n-1).

pg. 50, recursive binary search:
else if(x == array[mid])
Again, that should be else if(x <= array[mid]), otherwise the code does the same thing as the previous if statement.

So frankly, skip this book. It contains errors that even a neophyte programmer ought to be able to catch.

I attend the school in which these two professors received their tenureship, and I must say, that this book is an absolute disappointment. They state that the reader "require no knowledge of calculus, only College Algebra" yet they go through the theories with little to no explanation, and assuming that the reader knows caculus. The book does a pitiful job of explaining chained matrix multiplication, graph theory, dynamic programming, Diskstra's algorithms, et al. It's NOT the best book, we're using the 3rd edition and it is just as bad as the 2nd edition. There are tons of typos and errors alike.