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  1. Home
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  3. Complexity and Evolution
  • Cited by 26
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
1996
Online ISBN:
9780511565564
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511565564
Subjects:
Life Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Evolutionary Biology, General and Classical Physics
Information

Book description

This unique book ranges across the physical, biological and social sciences in the development of its primary theme, that there are nine major 'integrative levels' which can be recognised. The term integrative levels was first used by Joseph Needham in 1937 and has two key features. The first is that members of a given integrative level are unified entities and the second is that a member of one level is commonly composed of parts which are members of the next lower level. Thus fundamental particles form Level 1 while Level 9 is that of sovereign states. This theme has been developed by Max Pettersson in a book which explores the many links between the physical, biological and social sciences, reaching wide-ranging and sometimes unexpected conclusions.

Reviews

" 'Improving Nature?' provides a much needed introduction that many teachers of general biology will find useful...[It] will also interest religious critics of genetic engineering..." The Quarterly Review of Biology

"Biologists interested in levels or organization and in patterns in the evolution of lifeshould carefully consider the ideas presented in this volume." Walter J. Bock, BioScience

"...this brief book serves its purpose if it provokes the reader to develope a more critical synoptic view of the whole shebang. I recommend it." Arthur Falk, The Quarterly Review of Biology

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