Notes

  1. . MihalyCsikszentmihalyi. From Thermodynamics to Values: A Transition Yet to Be Accomplished,” Zygon  6 (1971):163–67.
  2. . A.Katchalsky. Thermodynamics of Flow and Biological Organization. Zygon  6 (1971):99–125.
  3. . Barry B.Edelstein. Thermodynamics, Kinetics, and Biology,” Zygon  6 (1971):160–62.
  4. . A recent and influential work on evolutionary theory, George C. Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), provides a representative sample of biological opinion on these topics: On organization–“When a biologist says that a system is organized, he should mean organized for genetic survival or for some subordinate goal that ultimately contributes to successful reproduction… Each part of the animal is organized for some function tributary to the ultimate goal of the survival of its own genes” (pp. 255–56). On teleology–“I have stressed the importance of the use of such concepts as biological means and ends because I want it clearly understood that I think such a conceptual framework is the essence of the science of biology” (p. 11).
  5. . Richard C.Lewontin. The Units of Selection,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics  1 (1970):1–18.
  6. . William C. Wimsatt, “Modern Science and the New Teleology I. The Conceptual Foundations of Functional Analysis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1971); “Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol. 2 (1971), in press; “Functional Organization” (paper read at the Boston Colloquia in Philosophy of Science, January 26, 1971) in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, ed. R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky (New York: Humanities Press), forthcoming.
  7. . Katchalsky, p. 100.
  8. . Williams, p. 33.
  9. . C. H. Waddington, “The Basic Ideas of Biology,” in Towards a Theoretical Biology, ed. C. H. Waddington (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), 1:4–5.
  10. . Williams, p. 258.
  11. . A recent and important synthesis of the views of H. A. Simon is his The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969). His modern (1962) classic, “The Architecture of Complexity,” is reprinted here as chap. 4. The argument of that article–that evolved systems will tend to be hierarchically organized in terms of stable subassemblies–is an interesting anticipation of Bronowski's notions of “stratified stability” and actually uses this concept to derive further properties of the system. (The notion of “stratified stability” was expounded in J. Bronowski, “New Concepts in the Evolution of Complexity: Stratified Stability and Unbounded Plans,” Zygon 5 [1970]: 1–35.) Simon's ideas on “near‐decomposeability” are also very close to some of the ideas expressed by Levins in his “Complex Systems” (see n. 13 below). Other suggestive works of Simon include his articles, “Thinking by Computers” and “Scientific Discovery and the Psychology of Problem Solving,” in Mind and Cosmos, ed. R. G. Colodny, Pittsburgh Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 3 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), pp. 3–21, 22–40.
  12. . Since 1956 Donald Campbell has been publishing a series of studies exploring in great detail applications of the “natural selection model” in psychology, the social sciences, philosophy of science, and general epistemology. Probably the most recently published survey of his work is his “Natural Selection as an Epistemological Model,” in A Handbook of Method in Cultural Anthropology, ed. R. Naroll and R. Cohen (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1970), pp. 51–85. Most of his other important articles on this topic are cited in this work.
  13. . Richard Levins has been writing some of the most exciting new work in the study of complex systems. Most noteworthy are his “Complex Systems,” in Towards a Theoretical Biology, ed. C. H. Waddington (1970), 3:73–88; Evolution in Changing Environments (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968); and “The Limits of Complexity” (paper prepared for a symposium at the Smithsonian Institution, 1969).
  14. . Some of these other works are discussed in chap. 8 of my dissertation (see n. 6 above).
  15. . See esp. Wimsatt (n. 6 above) “Functional Organization” and “Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements.”