Games of Life: Explorations in Ecology, Evolution, and Behaviour

by Karl Sigmund

Book Overview

Life is often a matter of gambles, pay-offs, and trade-offs, just like a game. This book takes readers on a tour through the games and computer simulations that are actually helping to advance knowledge in such fields as ecology, evolution, and animal behavior. Although the book deals with questions of vital importance, like sex and survival, it does so in the lively, entertaining spirit of game-playing. It starts with artificial life and self-replicating...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198547838
• ISBN13: 9780198547839
• Release Date: August 1993
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A fine and funny introduction

I'm sorry to see that this book is out of print at the time of this writing. I hope it gets republished.For one thing, it's funny. Karl Sigmund is a mathematician, and he has a mathematician's sense of humor. (I mean that as a _good_ thing.)For another, it's very informative. The topics of the chapters are widely scattered -- John Horton Conway's game of Life; predator-prey systems; the Prisoner's Dilemma and the evolution of cooperation -- but what they have in common is their relevance to evolutionary biology, ecology, and psychology. And I don't personally know of any other single volume that introduces _all_ of them to the lay reader -- let alone that does so as well and charmingly as Sigmund's book.I originally set out to review it because I had just written a review of William Provine's _The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics_. These two books work pretty well together: Provine gives a "diachronic" account of the historical development of the field (or at least one of its major subfields), and Sigmund gives a "synchronic" account of its present state (or nearly so; the book was written in 1993). Between the two of them, they ought to give the interested reader a pretty healthy sense of what's so intellectually captivating about this field.Well, if that sounds good to you, pick up a used copy of Sigmund's book. Or maybe, by the time you read this, it will be back in print.

A Superb Introduction to Contemporary Evolutionary Theory

In "Games of Life" Karl Sigmund has written a book that manages to be informative, thought provoking and witty as well. He has managed to pull together a number of areas into one cohesive thread; contemprary topics such as complexity in population dynamics, game thoery as applied to natural selection and self-reproducing automata are discussed in a suprisingly clear and intuitive manner. Readers interested in artifical life, the dynamics of population, self organized complexity will find this a stimulating and entertaining read.

informative , funny and easy to read

You'll learn a lot with this one! How can an Austrian Mathematician be so funny?A clear guide to the state of the art in biology.Sigmund makes connections with computer programming,human behaviour,sex, altruism.No unnecessary tedious explanations,complex only when it must be. In short a great book and a great teacher. Do not miss this one!!