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Brian Goodwin
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How the Leopard Changed Its Spots : The Evolution of Complexity First Thus Edition

by Brian Goodwin (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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Do genes explain life? Can advances in evolutionary and molecular biology account for what we look like, how we behave, and why we die? In this powerful intervention into current biological thinking, Brian Goodwin argues that such genetic reductionism has important limits.


Drawing on the sciences of complexity, the author shows how an understanding of the self-organizing patterns of networks is necessary for making sense of nature. Genes are important, but only as part of a process constrained by environment, physical laws, and the universal tendencies of complex adaptive systems. In a new preface for this edition, Goodwin reflects on the advances in both genetics and the sciences of complexity since the book's original publication.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0691088098
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0691088099
  3. Edition
    First Thus
  4. Publisher
    Princeton University Press
  5. Publication date
    March 1, 2001
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.14 x 0.64 x 9.21 inches
  8. Print length
    275 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[Goodwin's] book genuinely illuminates the mysteries of biological development."---David Papineau, New York Times

Review

"This is a brilliant book, wonderfully written. . . . Goodwin is a real scholar, of great breadth and insight. He writes beautifully, conveying difficult themes in an exciting manner."―Simon Levin, Princeton University

"This is a brilliant book, wonderfully written. . . . Goodwin is a real scholar, of great breadth and insight. He writes beautifully, conveying difficult themes in an exciting manner."―Simon Levin, Princeton University

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; First Thus edition (March 1, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 275 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691088098
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691088099
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 0.64 x 9.21 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings

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Brian Goodwin

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
18 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Charles P. Bigger
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
This is the very vest introducion to morphogenetics
One person found this helpful
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A. Panda
5.0 out of 5 stars Pattern formation in complex systems
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2008
This book is an easy and interesting reading about morphogenesis, which if I understood correctly, is a new branch of biology that tries to explain things that cannot be explained through genetics or evolution alone. It does not contradict existing knowledge or Darwinism, on the contrary, it seems to build on genetics in a beautiful way to complement it.

For example, after cutting off the nucleus from a one-celled algae named acetabularia, its corolarium still grows from the stem. Afterwards, the algae cannot reproduce itself or even synthesize more proteins (since DNA with all its genetic code for producing proteins is located in the nucleus and is therefore gone) and acetabularia dies. The author suggests that the "information" to generate the corolarium in its precise form might be the result of chemical and physical properties of some minerals in the stem, not of genetic instructions (since these are not available anymore at the time the corolarium develops). He is not claiming that genetic instructions are not vital (acetabularia dies when the nucleus is removed), he is just saying that development, specially the "form" could depend on physical and chemical properties of the medium inside the cell (in the end, this medium is also determined by DNA and genetics).

I have read that if you introduce with surgery mother cells into a mammal's brain, new neurons are formed from the mother cells. (For further reference see  A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain ). Why not liver cells? There must be some physical or chemical signal 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 creates or originates a pattern or form specific to the species) or whatever other signal you might think of, to tell the newcomer: "hey, you are inside a brain", so that it becomes a neuron and not a liver cell.

I would think that in order to rule about every little detail of development, there should be a lot of genes in our genome (which in fact there are), but geneticists were expecting to find a lot more than what they really found when  Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA . So why shouln't DNA accept a little help from other friends inside the tremendously complex living organisms? Why should it be responsible of everything? A probably complementary approach can be found in evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-devo), as described in  Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo ) and  Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (Vintage) .

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. Good translation into Spanish by Tusquets /Metatemas by the way.
2 people found this helpful
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Dr. H. A. Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars The New Biology of the emergence of complexity
Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2012
How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The evolution of complexity by Brian Goodwin, Phoenix (Orion Books), 1997, 254 ff

This is a generously illustrated textbook of evolutionary biology that requires readers to get to grips with biological concepts and terminology. It is not for the faint-hearted general reader.
Brian Goodwin was a theoretical biologist who died in 2009 after an eminent research and teaching career. Because the book is over a decade old now there are developments in the mechanism of action of DNA that are not mentioned here, and the Human Genome Project, started in 1990 by James D. Watson and completed in 2003, was still underway when this was written. The emphasis of Goodwin's approach was always holistic or ecological in the sense that he saw evolution in terms of interconnection between the constituents of a biological system and between these and the environment. He thus expands on the Darwinian organismal approach and on the preoccupation with the role of the gene favoured by Richard Dawkins and many other biologists, but does not reject either treatment.

Although more than a decade old now, this book is by no means wholly outdated and irrelevant. It provides an excellent introduction to the application of mathematics, physics and computer modelling to biology. Goodwin begins by comparing the situation in biology with the 20th century revolution in physics, when Newtonian macro physics was supplemented by quantum physics of the micro world. Biology similarly in the 20th century shifted emphasis from Darwinian evolution based on organisms to focus on the cellular role of genes. The `leopard' of the title is a metaphor for the science of biology. Darwinian adaptation to environment alone cannot explain the origin and extinction of certain species or characteristics of organisms. Cells can undergo mutations that do not always start with changes in a gene: mutations can also arise from changes in cell structure and environment - ideas that have been established in this decade by researchers like Bruce Lipton and others researching in epigenetics.

Goodwin accepts that complex structures like the eye can arise by a succession of small random changes that accumulate by virtue of the incremental adaptive improvement that each bestows upon the structure. This is the Darwinian approach adopted by biologists like Dawkins, but Goodwin proposes that complexity can also arise spontaneously by cooperation between components of a system. In fact, the emphasis in this presentation is on cooperation in biology rather than competition and `survival of the fittest'.

The key in molecular terms to how such cooperation between biological components comes about lies in the physics of dissipative systems studied by Ilya Prigogine and Gregoire Nicolis. Goodwin uses the chemical Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (where a mixture of chemicals undergoes continual oscillating colour changes) to illustrate comparable interaction between biological cellular entities. Such organisation from seeming chaos is found also in the patterns produced by computer-generated Mandelbrot sets. As another example of mathematical order in nature, Goodwin describes the occurrence of the patterns of the Fibonacci series that are widespread in nature amongst fauna and flora, a connection inspired by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's seminal book On Growth and Form.

This is a scientifically demanding but highly informative book for anyone interested in the spontaneous emergence of complexity in the natural world and is prepared to tackle the underlying biology, all explained in relatively simple terms. I've dropped a star in the rating only because there are now more modern books on the same subject. There are half a dozen pages of References and Further Reading, and an Index.

Howard Jones is the author of The Tao of Holism

 The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles
The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Ivan
5.0 out of 5 stars gut aber complex!
Reviewed in Germany on January 5, 2014
Verified Purchase
Dieses Buch ist echt gut. Es ist aber nicht für jeden: das Thema ist kompliziert und, auch wenn der Autor gut schreibt, bleibt es schwierig zu verstehen. Ich muss es noch ein 2. mal lesen!
One person found this helpful
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Dr. H. A. Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars The New Biology of the emergence of complexity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2010
Verified Purchase
How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The evolution of complexity by Brian Goodwin, Phoenix (Orion Books), 1997, 254 ff

The New Biology of the emergence of complexity
By Howard Jones

This is a generously illustrated textbook of evolutionary biology that requires readers to get to grips with biological concepts and terminology. It is not for the faint-hearted general reader.
Brian Goodwin was a theoretical biologist who died in 2009 after an eminent research and teaching career. Because the book is over a decade old now there are developments in the mechanism of action of DNA that are not mentioned here, and the Human Genome Project, started in 1990 by James D. Watson and completed in 2003, was still underway when this was written. The emphasis of Goodwin's approach was always holistic in the sense that he saw evolution in terms of interconnection between the constituents of a biological system and between these and the environment. He thus expands on the Darwinian organismal approach and on the preoccupation with the role of the gene favoured by Richard Dawkins and many other biologists, but does not reject either treatment.

Although more than a decade old now, this book is by no means wholly outdated and irrelevant. It provides an excellent introduction to the application of mathematics, physics and computer modelling to biology. Goodwin begins by comparing the situation in biology with the 20th century revolution in physics, when Newtonian macro physics was supplemented by quantum physics of the micro world. Biology similarly in the 20th century shifted emphasis from Darwinian evolution based on organisms to focus on the cellular role of genes. The `leopard' of the title is a metaphor for the science of biology. Darwinian adaptation to environment alone cannot explain the origin and extinction of certain species or characteristics of organisms. Cells can undergo mutations that do not always start with changes in a gene: mutations can also arise from changes in cell structure and environment - ideas that have been established in this decade by researchers like Bruce Lipton.

Goodwin accepts that complex structures like the eye can arise by a succession of small random changes that accumulate by virtue of the incremental adaptive improvement that each bestows upon the structure (the Darwinian approach adopted by biologists like Dawkins), but proposes that complexity can also arise spontaneously by cooperation between components of a system. In fact, the emphasis in this presentation is on cooperation in biology rather than competition and `survival of the fittest'.

The key in molecular terms to how such cooperation between biological components comes about lies in the physics of dissipative systems studied by Ilya Prigogine and Gregoire Nicolis. Goodwin uses the chemical Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (where a mixture of chemicals undergoes continual oscillating colour changes) to illustrate comparable interaction between biological cellular entities. Such organisation from seeming chaos is found also in the patterns produced by computer-generated Mandelbrot sets. As another example of mathematical order in nature, Goodwin describes the occurrence of the patterns of the Fibonacci series that are widespread in nature amongst fauna and flora, a connection inspired by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's seminal book On Growth and Form.

This is a scientifically demanding but highly informative book for anyone interested in the spontaneous emergence of complexity in the natural world and is prepared to tackle the underlying biology, all explained in relatively simple terms. I've dropped a star in the rating only because there are now more modern books on the same subject. There are half a dozen pages of References and Further Reading, and an Index.

Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.

 Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (Penguin Science)
7 people found this helpful
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