Gothic Bookshop

Modularity -- the attempt to understand systems as integrations ofpartially independent and interacting units -- is today a dominant theme in the lifesciences, cognitive science, and computer science. The concept goes back at leastimplicitly to the Scientific (or Copernican) Revolution, and can be found behindlater theories of phrenology, physiology, and genetics; moreover, art, engineering, and mathematics rely on modular design principles. This collection broadens thescientific discussion of modularity by bringing together experts from a variety ofdisciplines, including artificial life, cognitive science, economics, evolutionarycomputation, developmental and evolutionary biology, linguistics, mathematics, morphology, paleontology, physics, theoretical chemistry, philosophy, and thearts.The contributors debate and compare the uses of modularity, discussing thedifferent disciplinary contexts of "modular thinking" in general (includinghierarchical organization, near-decomposability, quasi-independence, and recursion)or of more specialized concepts (including character complex, gene family, encapsulation, and mosaic evolution); what modules are, why and how they develop andevolve, and the implication for the research agenda in the disciplines involved; andhow to bring about useful cross-disciplinary knowledge transfer on the topic. Thebook includes a foreword by the late Herbert A. Simon addressing the role ofnear-decomposability in understanding complex systems.