Stuart Kauffman

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Stuart Alan A. Kauffman (28 September 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for proposing the first models of Boolean networks.

Biography

Kauffman presently holds a joint appointment at the University of Calgary in Biological Sciences and in Physics and Astronomy, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy. He is also an iCORE (Informatics Research Circle of Excellence) ^[1] chair and the director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics.

He graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University in 1963, and completed a medical degree (M.D.) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his residency in Emergency Medicine, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruitfly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago, then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1995, where he rose to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics. Kauffman held a MacArthur Fellowship, 1987-1992.

Kauffman rose to prominence through his association with the Santa Fe Institute (a non-profit research institute dedicated to the study of complex systems), where he was faculty in residence from 1986 to 1997, and through his work on models in various areas of biology. These included autocatalytic sets in origin of life research, gene regulatory networks in developmental biology, and fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology.

In 1996, Kauffman started BiosGroup, a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based for-profit company that employs complex systems methodology to attempt to solve business problems. BiosGroup was acquired by NuTech Solutions^[2] in early 2003. As of 2003, Kauffman was a director of NuTech which is no longer doing business.

Work

Kauffman is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection.

Some fellow biologists working in Kauffman's area reserve judgment on Kauffman's claims about self-organization and evolution. A case in point is the introduction to the 2002 book "Self Organization in Biological Systems".^[3]

Kauffman has been increasingly important in management theory. His NK model, and the idea of epistatic links, have been used to describe the way information is shared in a firm.

Publications

Kauffman has written several books and articles. Books, a selection:

• 1993, Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford University Press, Technical monograph.
• 1995, At Home in the Universe. Oxford University Press.
• 2000, Investigations. Oxford University Press.
• 2008, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books - ISBN 0465003001 -
  (Video Introduction)

Articles, a selection:

• 1969, "Metabolic stability and epigenesis in randomly constructed genetic nets," in: Journal of Theoretical Biology, 22:437-467, 1969.
• 1991, "Antichaos and Adaptation," in: Scientific American, August 1991.
• 2004, "Prolegomenon to a General Biology", in William A. Dembski, Michael Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge University Press.
• 2004, "Autonomous Agents", in John D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, and C.L. Harper Jr., eds., Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity, Cambridge University Press.

About Stuart Kauffman:

• Dana MacKinzie, "The Science of Surprise", Discover Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 2, 59-63, February 2002.
• Kauffman about Kauffman: (Video)

References

1. ^ iCORE Home
2. ^ Letterhead
3. ^ http://www.scottcamazine.com/personal/selforganization/SOMain.html

External links

• An online chat with Stuart Kauffman on a complexity organization website.
• EvoWiki entry on Stuart Kauffman.
• Video presentation "The adjacent possible" by Kauffman on autonomous agents.
• Biocomplexity and Informatics iCORE Chair.
• Beyond reductionism: Reinventing The Sacred, paper by Kauffman on reductionism.
• Tech Nation discussion with Dr. Moira Gunn on his book "Reinventing the Sacred" (recorded June 6, 2008).