The concepts of evolution and complexity theory have become part of the intellectual ether permeating the life sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, and, more recently, management science and economics. In this book, John E. Mayfield elegantly synthesizes core concepts from multiple disciplines to offer a new approach to understanding how evolution works and how complex organisms, structures, organizations, and social orders can and do arise based on information theory and computational science. Intended for the intellectually adventuresome, this book challenges and rewards readers with a nuanced understanding of evolution and complexity that offers consistent, durable, and coherent explanations for major aspects of our life experiences. Numerous examples throughout the book illustrate evolution and complexity formation in action and highlight the core function of computation lying at the work's heart.

From the moment pub landlord and keen amateur entomologist, Arnold Matson, arrives in Blinkington-on-the-Treacle to take over his new hostelry, we are led through a colourful collection of vignettes and poignant flashbacks that are both comically funny and disturbingly familiar. Set in an imaginary backwater village, 'Dandruff' dips delightfully into the intricacies and miniscule absurdities of everyday life. Mayfield's world blends originality with an amalgamation of Dylan Thomas, P.G. Wodehouse, G.K. Chesterton and Alan Bennett and can accurately be described as 'kite flying for the imagination.'

"Will soon stand with such classic works as those by William R. Taylor and Michael O'Brien in the realm of Southern letters."--Bertram Wyatt-Brown, author of Southern Honor "Counterfeit Gentlemen captures a volatile region laughing (uneasily) at itself, and it is the freshest interpretation of the Old South to come along in a decade."--Stephen Berry, author of All That Makes a Man Counterfeit Gentlemen is a stunning reappraisal of Southern manhood and identity that uses humor and humorists to carry the reader into the very heart of antebellum culture. What does it mean to be a man in the pre-Civil War South? And how can we answer the question from the perspective of the early twenty-first century? John Mayfield does so by revealing how early nineteenth-century Southern humorists addressed the anxieties felt by men seeking to chart a new path between the old honor culture and the new market culture. Lacking the constraints imposed by journalism or proper literature, these writers created fictional worlds where manhood and identity could be tested and explored. Preoccupied alternately by moonlight and magnolias and racism and rape, we have continually presented ourselves with an Old South so mirthless it couldn't breathe. If all Mayfield did was remind us that Old Southerners laughed, he would have accomplished something. But he also offers a sophisticated analysis of the social functions humor performed and the social anxieties it reflected.