The Bacta Review A New Kind of
Science
For a good account of the actual mechanisms of biological pattern formation, as
they are being revealed by molecular developmental biology, see John Gerhart
and Marc Kirschner, Cells, Embryos and Evolution: Toward a Cellular and
Developmental Understanding of Phenotypic Variation and Evolutionary
Adaptability (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 1997). This book provides
an excellent discussion of the interactions between genetic control,
self-organization, evolutionary forces and functional adpatations in
development. (There is a
nice review by Danny
Yee.) --- The failure of experiment to turn up any biological system
working according to Turing's principles was remarked on by the late, great John
Maynard Smith in his review of Depew and Weber's Darwinism
Evolving (in
the New
York Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 4, 2 March 1995); my search of
the subsequent literature doesn't indicate that the situation has changed.
Update, 4 March 2012: See the update at the end of the main post.