At Home in the Universe
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We all know of instances of spontaneous order such as the shape of a snowflake, but Kauffman argues that 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". If enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity--for instance, a living cell.
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.
Stuart Kauffman - Wikipedia
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. 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. This is a powerful idea in that the way growth is measured today does not take into account the diversity of products and ideas in the economy and marketplace of ideas.
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Such an economic "law" would most certainly favor a minimally regulated market system to any kind of centrally planned alternative. Finally, what this book offers, perhaps above all else, is a story of emergent order that can offer an awe and inspiration, perhaps even a spiritual experience, to those atheists and agnostics that have had their special central place under God's warm and steady gaze ripped asunder by the growth of scientific thought -- instead of giving us a creation story that is a cold, improbable, and haphazard mistake that arose from the swamps of a primordial earth, it gives us one in which humanity is an inevitable and expected outcome of the laws of this curious universe.
What a wonderful theory! And what wonders yet remain eager to find us behind the ever settling fog of our ignorance? The book would have gained much clarity to be written in a classical scientific literature style. It should have been then an easy read as the concepts and maths involved in At Home with the Universe are not too complex. The ideas are interesting but some shortcuts didn't convince me, especially when a whole theory is supposed to be proved just because a mathematical model derived from it seems to be in adequation with it on a peculiar point.
For instance, p And in fact, the number of known human cell types is If our theory is right, we should be able to predict the scaling relation between the number of genes and the number of cell types. The latter should increase as the square root function of the former. I would draw a parallel with the representation of our solar system: When Copernic published his De Revolutionibus , it was clearly an improvement on the geocentric model, but even if his model gave clearly good and verified results such as the fact that Venus presents phases , these results don't prove that the whole model is exact.
So even if the graph were more convincing, it wouldn't in any way prove the validity of the whole theory. View all 3 comments. Aug 04, Gendou rated it did not like it Shelves: Even for a popular science book, it's pretty terrible because there is so much wrong with the "science", which is mostly buried beneath mountains of jargon. Also, rhetorical arguments and hyperbolic, bogus claims pervade the meandering prose drenched in soft language and philosophy.
If enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity--for instance, a living cell. That the d Read David's Review. Jul 12, Mark rated it really liked it. The Philosophy of Biomimicry. So, by understanding the rules behind formation and self organization of one of these networks, could you actually model or mould another to suit our needs?
The thesis is not very unclear, and the majority of claims are totally bogus. See my full review for way more details: NP problem, auto-catalytic sets, strange attractors, fitness landscapes, and peptide chains. Aug 24, Daniel rated it it was amazing. This book is really good, though needs to be taken with a grain of salt since its super theoretical. Basically Kauffman is trying to simulate with mathematical models what occurs in evolution.
Its a nice thought, but doesnt work so well when you simply cannot make a model complex enough to include a reasonable amount of the variables we encounter in everyday life Id love to chat with anyone about this book if you ever read it Sep 28, Jesse added it. As I read this book, it appeared to be a series of anecdotes about how certain chemical systems appear to spontaneously "self-organize", and then some anecdotes about simplistic computer models the author created to simulate the "primordial soup" where life may have begun.
None of it was convincing, certainly not enough for his amazing reveal, "Life started on earth just because really complex interconnected systems tend to manifest pseudo-organized behavior! I stopped reading the book halfway. Turns out I am a system complex enough to self-organize and return this book to the library before finishing it.
Aug 08, Cassandra Kay Silva rated it it was amazing Shelves: I think he captures the main points about this book that are important. It was an interesting proposal the way the author sets up complexity to reflect mathematical ideas, his proposition of the way of biological creation. I was very interested in his proposals and he was very clear on the work in this area and the basis that it is built on. I can't say that I have any way of checking his hypothesis. Only to say that it does seem quite sound and well put together.
That the d Read David's Review. That the delivery was solid and the material well presented. An enjoyable read for sure.
Sep 16, B. This book was all over the dang place, and not really in a good way. The problem is a lack of intellectual discipline on behalf of the author. Kauffman is trying to serve several masters with this book, and it ends up a mash. Not only is he giving an excited account of his academic work modeling certain types of systems which might or might not have a bearing on evolutionary ecologies, but he's also trying to extend those models to areas where he admittedly has no expertise like technology, pol This book was all over the dang place, and not really in a good way.
Not only is he giving an excited account of his academic work modeling certain types of systems which might or might not have a bearing on evolutionary ecologies, but he's also trying to extend those models to areas where he admittedly has no expertise like technology, politics, and law and also stating grand ontological theories of our place in the world.
His fundamental biological point is that life could be an emergent population of auto-catalyzing systems of molecular substrates and enzymes of sufficient diversity. His view is thus that life is actually almost inevitable given the mathematical likelihood of order emerging in such situations. He believes this despite the admitted failure of any laboratory to reproduce such an occurrence, but okay. He also thinks those models might, MIGHT, apply to political orders and to technological innovations, although he says over and over that he doesn't have any real basis for those views other than a hunch.
His grand philosophical aim is creating a new secular sense of the sacred in which we marvel that we are meant to be here because life is so suited to the underlying math of the universe, and that somehow this emergent quality of math is better than blind chance and the atomism of DNA I dunno man. I admire his attempt to find some meaning beyond the clockwork god, but frankly, I don't understand what he's on about. How is a firmer case for the anthropic principle evidence of a non-mystical sense of the sacred, whatever that is? On his view, we're still random, we're just more likely to arise.
And how do we know that we're not in a vanishingly rare goldilocks universe in a multiverse of dead variants? I am not heartened that life was inevitable or slightly more likely than not, because life is a given at this point.
- The Book of Purpose: The YOU Testament.
- At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity.
- At Home in the Universe the Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity.
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Pushing the timetable back or weighting the dice in our favor doesn't have anything fundamental to say about ultimate purpose, because we're still either products of chance in a meaningless universe, or there is an unseen hand. He wants the math describing the universe to be that hand, but it's still just physics, not metaphysics.
There's a lot of beard-stroking in this book, ultimately signifying little. Jun 30, B. Richardson rated it liked it. Spontaneous generation makes a comeback. If you were to sum up this book in one sentence, that would be it. Stuart Kauffman, a specialist in the theory of complexity, asks a very legitimate question. In a world where nature's laws demand we move from order to disorder, why does all life evolve into ever more complex forms. He then attempts to demonstrate three things: Even though he acknowledges that the theories behind a lot of this book are the minority view, it does sound awfully convincing to me, I am reminded of Proverbs My interest is peaked enough to read further.
Dec 17, Michael Huang rated it it was ok. The author may be on the cusp of finding something interesting or he may be stepping into a deep pile of manure, either way, the book is a bad piece of stream-of-consciousness non-fiction woven with pseudo poetic language. Every chapter starts with some warm fuzzy pseudo poem to promise some new age wisdom and takes forever to come to the chase. Once there, you are given some oversimplified puzzle, some solution that may or may not mean much in the original domain where the simplified puzzle is d The author may be on the cusp of finding something interesting or he may be stepping into a deep pile of manure, either way, the book is a bad piece of stream-of-consciousness non-fiction woven with pseudo poetic language.
Once there, you are given some oversimplified puzzle, some solution that may or may not mean much in the original domain where the simplified puzzle is drawn. Even language and facts are loose.
At Home in the Universe
There are also a non-trivial amount of grammatical errors to annoy you. This is not to say the author is a charlatan scientist. But as a book, the writing is terrible and the content simply does not cohere. Apr 10, Elizabeth marked it as to-read. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here. Kauffman outlines the characteristics and potential uses of complexity, simply delineating its meaning for the future of scientific thought. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Choice Reviews This engaging and baffling tale about biological evolution by someone who has been dubbed a "visionary pioneer" is based on decades of computer simulations, boundless enthusiasm, lots of imagination, and zealotry for the impossibility of defining complexity theory.
Kauffman attempts to illuminate an enormous number of phenomena using his view of self-organization "order for free" , and claims that "complexity" somehow catapults one beyond a Darwinian understanding of evolution by natural selection. Kauffman asserts that from cultural systems to ecosystems, the evolutionary dynamic follows similar laws, and spontaneous order plays a great role in all of them. The subjects covered range from the origins of life to development of individuals, and comparisons of organisms and artifacts.
The large number of figures vary from cartoon-like to mesmerizing networks and puzzling graphs. The last chapter treats the reader to a hodgepodge on "an emerging global civilization. Recommended for the general reader who likes to take an eclectic stab at everything. Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find eight spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13 left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The striking fact is that these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series: Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms.
The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis.
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 . Start by marking “At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity” as Want to Read: Books by Stuart A. Kauffman. Quotes from At Home in the Un.
Many are the efforts of biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants exhibit this remarkable pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all these odd things need not reflect selection or historical accident. Emrah Aydinonat - - Journal of Economic Methodology 14 4: The Biosemiotic Glossary Project: Logical, Functional and Dynamical.
Stuart Kauffman
Mitchell - - Synthese 2: The Philosophy of Biomimicry. Henry Dicks - - Philosophy and Technology 29 3: Kauffman - - Oxford University Press. At Home in the Universe: Selfstructuring a Substrate for Evolution. Maarten Chris Boerlijst - The Uniqueness of Biological Self-Organization: Challenging the Darwinian Paradigm.