Robert Rosen (1) (1934–1998)

I found this book to be a very difficult read, but interesting enough that I couldn't immediately reshelve it. I did not understand all the ideas presented, so this review is not meant to judge the validity or novelty of the author’s arguments, only give you some idea of whether or not you would be interested in reading it.

A majority of the text uses mathematical formalism in the form of functions and mappings. If you are not comfortable with the type of math presented in Calculus then I show more would skip it. The flavor of the book is more like epistemology or the philosophy and fundamentals of science rather than a discussion of life. In fact, I thought the subtitle of this book - "A Comprehensive Inquiry into the nature, origin, and fabrication of life" was somewhat misleading since its main thrust is not really a discussion of evolution, the chemical origin of life, or even the biology of life (cellular processes). It is a theoretical work that questions some of the fundamental assumptions of science and more specifically the machine metaphor of life. The author touches on many ideas from Topology, Category Theory, the Theory of Machines, and Relational Biology. This is an advanced text that would probably be used at the graduate level. show less

Relatively early thinking about the impact of complexity on biology and theories of life. Seems a bit dated if one has read Stuart Kauffman or more modern expositions but interesting to realize how non-intuitive complexity theory must have been not too many years ago.