Stuart Kauffman argues in
At Home in the Universe
that biology is driven by (a) natural self-organisation of complex systems,
(b) natural selection and (c) historical accident.
Dynamical systems,
it seems to me, are just a subset of computational systems.
I agree, of course, that they are the type of computational systems
of the most relevance to cognitive science.
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines,
by
Kevin Kelly, is my favourite popular intro to this whole field.
The writing is poetic, powerful and sometimes beautiful.
AI has finally made that long-postponed call to Down House
to pick up the waiting
Darwin,
and together we're off into a more optimistic, biological future.
talkorigins.org
(or via here
and ftp)
is the best place to go for an understanding of why evolutionary biology is just
normal science, while "creationism" is not science, but religion.
Last Thursdayism
- The idea that the world was created last Thursday, but with the appearance of age:
people's memories, history books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and so forth.