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From Complexity to Life: On The Emergence of Life and Meaning
This title brings together a group of scholars in the sciences of complexity, and a few workers on the interface of science and religion, to explore the wider implications of complexity studies. It includes an introduction to complexity studies and explores the concept of information in physics and biology and various philosophical and religious perspectives. Chapter authors include Paul Davies, Greg Chaitin, Charles Bennett, Werner Loewenstein, Paul Dembski, Ian Stewart, Stuart Kauffman, Harold Morowitz, Arthur Peacocke, and Niels H. Gregersen.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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May 22, 2021
I read this with my interest in the ontological implications of complexity theory in mind. I found a lot of math that I struggled to follow. It is amazing how much I do not understand when you get to a level of detail. This book is a sorting book. I felt just on the cusp of understanding it, without really achieving it. I am not smart enough for this book. I do not think someone with my interests and intellect is the target audience for this book. It is too technical and dense for me.
The concluding pages gave a couple of quotes worth pondering:
“The self-organized critical state with all its fluctuations is not the best possible state, but it is the best state that is dynamically achievable” (p 232). We can only work with the Universe with the way it is, not the way we would like it to be in some sort of utopian ideal (aka, to me socialism does not work). The Universe has a nature.
“For complexity is the evolution of coevolution, in which cooperation plays an inextricable role” (p 232). We are co-created in tandem on many levels. Symbiosis is important the co-creation of nature and nurture. I could not be what I am, if it was not for…. I am reminded of MC Escher’s hands drawing hands, and the arguments in Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
The book suggests a fourth law of thermodynamic reflecting self-organisation towards complexity in specific circumstances.
I would be interested in what my smarter friends with a better understanding of Maths and Physics thought of this (Steven Xu) and whether they could explain it to me.
The concluding pages gave a couple of quotes worth pondering:
“The self-organized critical state with all its fluctuations is not the best possible state, but it is the best state that is dynamically achievable” (p 232). We can only work with the Universe with the way it is, not the way we would like it to be in some sort of utopian ideal (aka, to me socialism does not work). The Universe has a nature.
“For complexity is the evolution of coevolution, in which cooperation plays an inextricable role” (p 232). We are co-created in tandem on many levels. Symbiosis is important the co-creation of nature and nurture. I could not be what I am, if it was not for…. I am reminded of MC Escher’s hands drawing hands, and the arguments in Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
The book suggests a fourth law of thermodynamic reflecting self-organisation towards complexity in specific circumstances.
I would be interested in what my smarter friends with a better understanding of Maths and Physics thought of this (Steven Xu) and whether they could explain it to me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review