If anyone is interested, I found
this book review fascinating reading.
The book itself, "Self Organisation in Biological Systems" by S. Camazine, J.L. Deneubourg, N.R. Franks, J. Sneyd, G. Theraulaz, and E. Bonabeau, [Princeton Studies in Complexity], Princeton University Press, is also probably very good.
Here is a very thought provoking and informative quote from the review ...
Quote:
My overriding impression of the book is that it is very honest. It does not hype the subject; it highlights that many patterns may be self-organization acting in concert with other mechanisms and that much self- organization research is, at this stage, plausibility arguments. That is, one may derive the possible proximate mechanisms from empirical research and then plug those mechanisms into a model.
Just because the global pattern may match the pattern observed in nature, it is never proof that those are the proximate mechanisms at work. All that has been shown is that those mechanisms are “necessary and sufficient” to generate the global pattern.
(In fact, the quote in the previous paragraph comes from a section where they showed that two very different models, one self-organized and one not, both produced the same global pattern, a point well made and for which the authors should be commended.)
Only critical tests, such as perturbation experiments—both in nature and in the models—will help establish “beyond all reasonable doubt”, that those are the correct proximate mechanisms. Unfortunately, most research in this field stops short of such rigorous methods.
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Very interesting, and in the context of life emerging from the primordial goo, well worthwhile keeping in mind.
Cheers