From Fractals And Cellular Automata To Biology: Information As Order Hidden Within Chance

Book excerpt: The didactical level of exposition, together with many astonishing images and animations, accompanied by the related simple computer programming codes (in Python and POV-Ray languages) make this book an extremely and unique useful tool to test the power of algorithmic information in generating ordered structure models (2D and 3D) like regular geometric shapes, complex shapes like fractals and cellular automata, and biological systems as the organs of a living body. Informational biologists besides mathematicians and physicists of complexity may learn to test their own capabilities in programming and modelling ordered structures starting from random initial conditions at different scale of each system: from elementary particles, to biological systems, to galaxies and the whole universe. Moreover the philosophical comments comparing some aspects of modern information theory to the Aristotelian notion of 'form are very appealing also for the epistemologist and the philosopher involved in complexity matters.