Cells to Civilizations

INTRODUCTION: A RECIPE FOR CHANGE 1
History and Form 3
Life's Creative Recipe 8

CHAPTER ONE: LOOPS AND LOTTERIES 13
Principle of Population Variation 16
Principle of Persistence 20
Principle of Reinforcement 23
Principle of Competition 24
Combining Principles 29

CHAPTER TWO: FROM GENES TO ECOSYSTEMS 34
Principle of Cooperation 36
Principle of Combinatorial Richness 40
Wandering Clouds 44
Principle of Recurrence 48
The Origin of Species 52
Species and Ecosystems 57
A Recipe for Evolution 58

CHAPTER THREE: CONVERSATIONS OF AN EMBRYO 61
Turing's Principles 63
Patterning a Cell 68
Switching Genes On and Off 70
A Molecular Fight 73
Looking into Gradients 76
A Common Form 80

CHAPTER FOUR: COMPLETING THE PICTURE 84
An Embryonic Cocktail Party 85
A Cooperative Eff ort 87
Regulatory Riches 88
Building on the Past 90
The Expanding Canvas 93
Deformation 97
The Three-Dimensional Canvas 105
A Common Recipe 108

CHAPTER FIVE: HISTORY IN THE MAKING 111
Unicellular Beginnings 114
Moving up a Scale 115
Zooming and Growing 118
A Recipe within a Recipe 120

CHAPTER SIX: HUMBLE RESPONSES 122
Making Adjustments 124
Flora's Story 127
The Bite of Venus 132
The Sensible Sea Slug 135
Patterns in Time 140
Human Responses 143
Carving up the World 147

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE NEURAL SIBYL 150
The Prophetic Dog 152
Predictive Neurons 155
Learning from Discrepancies 157
Pavlov and Punishments 163
Core Principles 164
A Neural Journey 168
Staying on the Move 169
A Recipe for Learning 173

CHAPTER EIGHT: LEARNING THROUGH ACTION 175
Calibration 176
Jumping Eyes 178
Visual Shifts 181
Learning to Calibrate 184
Action-Learning Loops 187
Smooth Movements 188
An Active Journey 193
Learning with Others 197

CHAPTER NINE: SEEING AS 200
The Neural Eye 204
Multiple Eyes 208
Seeing through Models 211
Learning at Many Levels 213
Top-down and Bottom-up 216
Competing Interpretations 217
A Question of Style 220
Creative Acts 228

CHAPTER TEN: FRAMING RECIPES 232
Development of Learning 233
Basic Instincts 237
Flexibility versus Directness 242

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE CRUCIBLE OF CULTURE 244
The Apprentice 245
Fruitful Populations 248
Lasting Change 250
Cultural Reinforcement 252
The Force of Competition 254
Cooperative Eff orts 255
A Cultural Mix 257
Propelled by the Past 260
A Cultural Recipe 263

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE GRAND CYCLE 266
Cultural Origins 267
Possible Worlds 270
Nature's Self-Portrait 275

Acknowledgments 281
Notes 283
References 299
Illustration Credits 307
Index 313