P/PPThis thought-provoking work will be valuable reading for students and for professionals trained in ecology and evolution…. it should be required reading for advanced undergraduates, for graduate student seminars, and for discussion courses on the nature of organic evolution. Recommended for] general readers, upper-level undergraduates and above. — IChoice/I/PPBird reveals his philosophical, almost mystical, inclinations… Bird’s book is a product of this creative imagination that grapples with the very process itself. — Martin Lockley, IThe Scientific and Medical Network/I/PPBird’s explanation of how organisms tap the universe of archetypes is… radically ingenious. — ITimes Literary Supplement/I/PPDick’s explanations of chaos, stability – chaostability – life and love, climate and culture are usually rigorous, often romantic – and none the worse for that. They are thorough and clear, whether maths or handwaving, logic or Gaia. His emphasis on iteration, recursion and consequent emergence of new properties will explain Complexity thinking to many recruits, but his expositionof problems of organic evolution will upset orthodox biologists who think they understand it. I enjoyed having my cage bars rattled. — Jack Cohen, co-author of IThe Collapse of Chaos, Figments of Reality, and Evolving the Alien/I/PPWhy, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people’s everyday existence. /PPEvolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding worl@9}p£× ¾Û€