Self-Organization as a New Paradigm in Evolutionary Biology: From Theory to Applied Cases in the Tree of Life

The epistemological synthesis of the various theories of evolution,  since the first formulation in 1802 with the transmission of the  inherited characters by J.B. Lamarck, shows the need for an alternative  synthesis to that of Princeton (1947). This new synthesis integrates the  scientific models of self-organization developed during the second half  of the 20th century based on the laws of physics, thermodynamics, and  mathematics with the emergent evolutionary problematics such as  self-organized memory.

This book shows, how self-organization is  integrated in modern evolutionary biology. It is divided in two parts:  The first part pays attention to the modern observations in paleontology  and biology, which include major theoreticians of the self-organization  (d’Arcy Thompson, Henri Bergson, René Thom, Ilya Prigogine). The second  part presents different emergent evolutionary models including the  sciences of complexity, the non-linear dynamical systems, fractals,  attractors, epigenesis, systemics, and mesology with different examples  of the sciences of complexity and self-organization as observed in the  human lineage, from both internal (embryogenesis-morphogenesis) and  external (mesology) viewpoints.