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Title details for Proving Darwin by Gregory Chaitin - Available

Proving Darwin

Making Biology Mathematical

by Gregory Chaitin
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Groundbreaking mathematician Gregory Chaitin gives us the first book to posit that we can prove how Darwin’s theory of evolution works on a mathematical level.
 
For years it has been received wisdom among most scientists that, just as Darwin claimed, all of the Earth’s life-forms evolved by blind chance. But does Darwin’s theory function on a purely mathematical level? Has there been enough time for evolution to produce the remarkable biological diversity we see around us? It’s a question no one has yet answered—in fact, no one has even attempted to answer it until now.
 
In this illuminating and provocative book, Gregory Chaitin argues that we can’t be sure evolution makes sense without a mathematical theory. He elucidates the mathematical scheme he’s developed that can explain life itself, and examines the works of mathematical pioneers John von Neumann and Alan Turing through the lens of biology. Chaitin presents an accessible introduction to metabiology, a new way of thinking about biological science that highlights the mathematical structures underpinning the biological world. Fascinating and thought-provoking, Proving Darwin makes clear how biology may have found its greatest ally in mathematics.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 8, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307907462

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307907462
      • File size: 4924 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      April 15, 2012
      From a renowned mathematician, a collection of a series of lectures on "Metabiology: Life as Evolving Software"--a "philosophy and history of ideas course on how and why to approach biology mathematically." Chaitin (Meta Math! The Quest for Omega, 2005, etc.) equates DNA with a universal programming language, software that "can presumably express any possible algorithm, any set of instructions for building and running an organism." He creates a model "toy" organism--pure DNA stripped of any cell parts or functioning metabolism--and studies how the organism evolves through mutations resulting from random walks in a huge software space. He makes the point that his model reflects the creativity and open-endedness of nature, in parallel with the incompleteness and open-endedness of mathematics itself, as Kurt Godel proved. Throughout the text, Chaitin pays considerable homage to Godel, Turing and von Neumann. The author's model organisms do not stagnate but respond to the challenge of creating extremely large whole numbers by creating variations in the software (mutations) achieved by those random walks, mutations that are in fact algorithms, which translate to the organism's increased fitness. Chaitin's invocation of mutations that are whole programs rather than simple changes in a single letter of the DNA code is necessary for his proof, but it has the effect of taking the issue of natural selection out of biology and into pure mathematics. As such, questions are sure to abound, and the book is a bit esoteric for general readers. But credit the author for a lively style, lots of useful historical references and an appendix that includes von Neumann's prescient essay on self-reproducing automata. Provocative? Yes. The last word on evolution? No, but a stimulating one all the same.

      COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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