The design and construction of flexible and efficient interactive programming systems Book

An introduction to several strands of mathematics and computer science which have parallels in nature and biology. The topics covered include:

+ Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem

+ Fractals

+ Chaos

+ Cellular Automata

+ Genetic Algorithms

Because of the breadth of topics, the subject matter is sometimes treated fairly lightly. Although this sort of introductory treatment was exactly what I wanted, I occasionaly found the explanations to be too hand-wavy, especially some of the philosophical asides.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this book very much. It's probably the only book that combines all of these topics into one comprehensive volume.

The book has its own website with source code for the programs used to investigate the various subjects.