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Title: Shaping Life: Genes, Embryos and Evolution by John Maynard Smith, John Maynard Smith ISBN: 0-300-08022-0 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A great idea unrealized
Comment: I picked this tiny book up hoping to get a decent introduction to contemporary theories of development. To an extent, that's what this book imparts; Smith compares and attempts to compromise the theories of self-organization and genetic instruction. The "compromise," however, is stilted, and despite my lack of in-depth biology knowledge I could clearly tell that Smith's lip service to the self-organization theory was quite lacking. The last section, an examination of the theories' political relevance, was utterly catastrophic and could probably have contained a more meaningful synthesis of the book's ideas.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Quickstart to the central issues in developmental biology
Comment: I was prompted to write this after reading the review below from the New Mexico reader. He misses the point, not Maynard-Smith. This little book (45 pages)is based on a lecture given by Smith at the London School of Economics. The central theme of his lecture was to make the point that the two views in developmental biology i.e. dynamic-holistic view and the local-reductionist view are both important. But, he extends this thinking by suggesting that this dichotomy in biology is a pattern that exists in all aspects/spheres/disciplines in life. This is what I found so revealing. Gore Vs Bush could not be a better (current) example that comes to mind when reading the final chapter 5 - Reductionists to the right, Holists to the left.
Rating: 1
Summary: Total misunderstanding
Comment: Although I certainly enjoy most books and articles by Maynard Smith, this book was a tremendous disappointment. He argues against self-organization in biology in a very bad way. Instead of a good argument, one finds a subjective, totally biased and unscientific argument (what a splash pattern has to do with morphogenesis? no idea, really ... that's a funny picture but nothing to do with development). Still worse, Maynard Smith tries to "put down" previous and current work on development from the point of view of complexity by claiming that it has to do with some obscure disappointment with Marxism and with some feminist-like reasoning (? ). I find this strategy really unfair and not appropiate for a great scientist and writer such as Maynard Smith. I think that it is clear that selforganization is, **together with information and adaptation** a fundamental part of the understanding of life. In trying to ridiculize complexity and selforganization, the author is (perhaps uncounsciously) acting in a way not far from "scientific creationists".
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Title: A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation by Peter Singer ISBN: 0300083238 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Evolution and the Theory of Games by John Maynard Smith ISBN: 0521288843 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 21 October, 1982 List Price(USD): $33.00 |
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Title: The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language by John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary, John Maynard Smith ISBN: 019286209X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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