Structural stability and morphogenesis

The author has tried to show, in detail and with precision. just how the global regularities with which biology deals can be envisaged as structures within a many-dimensioned space. He not only has shown how such ideas as chreods, the epigenetic landscape, and switching points, which previously were expressed only in the unsophisticated language of biology, can be formulated more adequately in terms such as vector fields, attractors, catastrophes. and the like; going much further than this. he develops many highly original ideas, both strictly mathematical ones within the field of topology, and applications of these to very many aspects of biology and of other sciences. It would be quite wrong to give the impression that Thorn's book is exclusively devoted to biology, The subjects mentioned in his title, Structural Stability and Morphoge.esis, have a much wider reference: and he relates his topological system of thought to physical and indeed to general philosophical problems. In biology, Thorn not only uses topological modes of thought to provide formal definitions of concepts and a logical framework by which they can be related; he also makes a bold attempt at a direct comparison between topological structures within four-dimensional space-time, such as catastrophe hypersurfaces, and the physical structures found in developing embryos. The basic importance of this book is the introduction, in a massive and thorough way, of topological thinking as a framework for theoretical biology.