Enrico Coen

An interesting, at times intriguing, idiosyncratic but ultimately not completely successful argument that evolution, development, learning and human culture all reflect the operation of seven core principles: population variation, persistence, reinforcement, competition, cooperation, combinatorial richness, and recurrence. Some interesting ideas, and Coen get points for novelty in combining these principles, and for using examples from art to illustrate his points, but at the end of the book his attempt at synthesis seems unfulfilled.… (more)