When physics was scientific top dog, celebrated innovators like
Erwin Schrodinger contemplated biology in books like What Is Life?
Now that molecular biology is enthroned, its masters in turn have
penned volumes like Monod's Chance and Necessity. Now chemists
Eigen and Winkler (Max Planck Institute, Berlin) continue the
tradition, drawing upon mathematical, physical, and molecular
biological ideas to weave a synthesis that seeks to establish a
rational or lawful basis for evolution and selection. Their ideas
draw heavily upon game and set theory, essentially as developed by
yon Neumann and Morgenstern. The first part of this scholarly (and
smoothly translated) volume reviews probabilities and rules in
board games with various levels of information, payoffs, and
strategies. From there the authors develop notions of chance - the
mutant molecule - acting within a system in which there are
extraordinarily large numbers of alternatives: possible protein
molecules, for example. Their thesis is that there is a lawful
process by which certain macromolecules will be favored (selected)
by the rules of the game. Early in the history of the planet,
combinations of certain molecules led to an autocatalytic process -
self-replicating macromolecules. Life. "Natural law" can be
interpreted, therefore, in terms of thermodynamics and statistical
mechanics. These are the forces that channel or tame chance so that
certain directions are chosen. The many short chapters, diagrams,
games, aphorisms, and literary references that the authors use to
amplify the theme lend a certain charm and sophistication to the
book. But the essential game theoretic basis will be challenged by
those scholars who have lately taken to question the bases for
"rational" or "optimal" strategies. No doubt others will find the
attempt to fit all of nature from inert pebble to works of art or
music into one grand scheme of game-play either hubris or the
ultimate reductionism. From the point of view of philosophy or
history of science, the thesis is at once provocative and also
characteristic of that German philosophical Weltanschauung - a
romantic idealism with "emergent" entities - that follows in the
tradition of Leibniz and Goethe. (Kirkus Reviews)
Using game theory and examples of actual games people play,
Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler show how the
elements of chance and rules underlie all that happens in the
universe, from genetic behavior through economic growth to the
composition of music.
To illustrate their argument, the authors turn to classic
games--backgammon, bridge, and chess--and relate them to physical,
biological, and social applications of probability theory and
number theory. Further, they have invented, and present here, more
than a dozen playable games derived from scientific models for
equilibrium, selection, growth, and even the composition of
RNA.
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