edited by Charles J Lumsden (University of Toronto, Canada), Lynn E H Trainor (University of Toronto, Canada), & Wendy A Brandts (University of Ottawa, Canada)

What is the physics of life and why does it matter? The essays in this book probe this question, celebrating modern biology's vibrant dialog with theoretical physics — a scientific adventure in which biological understanding is enriched by physical theory without losing its own inherent traditions and perspectives. The book explores organic complexity and self-organization through research applications to embryology, cell biology, behavioral neuroscience, and evolution. The essays will excite the interest of physics students in thinking about biology's “grand challenges”, in part by means of self-contained introductions to theoretical computer science, symmetry methods in bifurcation theory, and evolutionary games. Seasoned investigators in both the physical and life sciences will also find challenging ideas and applications presented in this volume.

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• Foundations:
  • Emergence in Physics and Biology (L E H Trainor)
  • Holism and Reduction (C J Lumsden)
  • Complexity: A Pluralistic Approach (W A M Brandts)
  • Dynamics, Complexity and Computation (P A Dufort & C J Lumsden)
• Development: Field Approaches to Pattern Formation:
  • Vector Field Models of Morphogenesis (W A M Brandts & J Totafurno)
  • Symmetry Breaking Bifurcations (T M Hart & L E H Trainor)
• Development: Principles of Self-Organization:
  • Generic Dynamics of Morphogenesis (B Goodwin)
  • Toward a Model of Growth and Form in Living Systems (F Cummings)
  • Living Organization, the Coherence of Organisms and the Morphogenetic Field (M W Ho et al.)
  • Is Spatial Pattern Formation Homologous in Unicellular and Multicellular Organisms? (J Frankel)
• Cellular and Organismic Biology:
  • Statistical Mechanics of the Main Phase Transition in Lipid Bilayers (F P Jones & P Tevlin)
  • Multi-Neuron Interactions in Neural Network Models of Associative Memory (A E Busch & L E H Trainor)
  • Network Hierarchies in Neural Organization, Development and Pathology (J P Sutton)
  • Category Switching — A Neural Network Approach (L E H Trainor et al.)
• Evolution:
  • A Model of Molecular Evolution Based on the Statistical Analysis of Nucleotide Sequences (L Luo)
  • Codon Space: Exploring the Origins and Development of the Genetic Code (L E H Trainor et al.)
  • Evolution of Development: The Shuffling of Ancient Modules by Ubiquitous Bureaucracies (E W Larsen)
  • Game Theory in Biology (G W A Rowe)