At Home in the Universe PDF
By:Stuart Kauffman
Published on 1996-11-21 by Oxford University Press
A major scientific revolution has begun, a new paradigm that rivals Darwin's theory in importance. At its heart is the discovery of the order that lies deep within the most complex of systems, from the origin of life, to the workings of giant corporations, to the rise and fall of great civilizations. And more than anyone else, this revolution is the work of one man, Stuart Kauffman, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kauffman brilliantly weaves together the excitement of intellectual discovery and a fertile mix of insights to give the general reader a fascinating look at this new science--and at the forces for order that lie at the edge of chaos. We all know of instances of spontaneous order in nature--an oil droplet in water forms a sphere, snowflakes have a six-fold symmetry. What we are only now discovering, Kauffman says, is that the range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed. Indeed, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. But how does this spontaneous order arise? Kauffman contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization, or what he calls |order for free,| that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity--a living cell. Kauffman uses the analogy of a thousand buttons on a rug--join two buttons randomly with thread, then another two, and so on. At first, you have isolated pairs; later, small clusters; but suddenly at around the 500th repetition, a remarkable transformation occurs--much like the phase transition when water abruptly turns to ice--and the buttons link up in one giant network. Likewise, life may have originated when the mix of different molecules in the primordial soup passed a certain level of complexity and self-organized into living entities (if so, then life is not a highly improbable chance event, but almost inevitable). Kauffman uses the basic insight of |order for free| to illuminate a staggering range of phenomena. We see how a single-celled embryo can grow to a highly complex organism with over two hundred different cell types. We learn how the science of complexity extends Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection: that self-organization, selection, and chance are the engines of the biosphere. And we gain insights into biotechnology, the stunning magic of the new frontier of genetic engineering--generating trillions of novel molecules to find new drugs, vaccines, enzymes, biosensors, and more. Indeed, Kauffman shows that ecosystems, economic systems, and even cultural systems may all evolve according to similar general laws, that tissues and terra cotta evolve in similar ways. And finally, there is a profoundly spiritual element to Kauffman's thought. If, as he argues, life were bound to arise, not as an incalculably improbable accident, but as an expected fulfillment of the natural order, then we truly are at home in the universe. Kauffman's earlier volume, The Origins of Order, written for specialists, received lavish praise. Stephen Jay Gould called it |a landmark and a classic.| And Nobel Laureate Philip Anderson wrote that |there are few people in this world who ever ask the right questions of science, and they are the ones who affect its future most profoundly. Stuart Kauffman is one of these.| In At Home in the Universe, this visionary thinker takes you along as he explores new insights into the nature of life.
This Book was ranked at 30 by Google Books for keyword Science Math Nature Ecology novel.
Book ID of At Home in the Universe's Books is AQFpAgAAQBAJ, Book which was written byStuart Kauffmanhave ETAG "UeaQCFI5ioM"
Book which was published by Oxford University Press since 1996-11-21 have ISBNs, ISBN 13 Code is 9780199761852 and ISBN 10 Code is 019976185X
Reading Mode in Text Status is false and Reading Mode in Image Status is true
Book which have "336 Pages" is Printed at BOOK under CategoryScience
Book was written in en
eBook Version Availability Status at PDF is true and in ePub is false
Book Preview
Download At Home in the Universe PDF Free
Download At Home in the Universe Books Free
Download At Home in the Universe Free
Download At Home in the Universe PDF
Download At Home in the Universe Books
No comments:
Post a Comment