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Humanity in a Creative Universe
In the hard sciences, which can often feel out of grasp for many lay readers, there are "great thinkers" who go far beyond the equations, formulas, and research. Minds such as Stephen Hawking philosophize about the functions and nature of the universe, the implications of our existence, and other impossibly fascinating, yet difficult questions. Stuart A. Kauffman is one of those great thinkers. He has dedicated his lifetime to researching "complex systems" at prestigious institutions and now writes his treatise on the most complex system of our universe. A recent Scientific American article claims that "philosophy begins where physics ends, and physics begins where philosophy ends," and perhaps no better quote sums up what Kauffman's latest book offers. Grounded in his rigorous training and research background, Kauffman is inter-disciplinary in every sense of the word, sorting through the major questions and theories in biology, physics, and philosophy. Best known for his philosophy of evolutionary biology, Kauffman coined the term "prestatability" to call into question whether science can ever accurately and precisely predict the future development of biological features in organisms. As evidenced by the title's mention of creativity, the book refreshingly argues that our preoccupation to explain all things with scientific law has deadened our creative natures. In this fascinating read, Kauffman concludes that the development of life on earth is not entirely predictable, because no theory could ever fully account for the limitless variations of evolution. Sure to cause a stir, this book will be discussed for years to come and may even set the tone for the next "great thinker."
312 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2016
38 people are currently reading
348 people want to read
About the author
Stuart A. Kauffman
16 books189 followersStuart Alan Kauffman (28 September 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for applying models of Boolean networks to simplified genetic circuits.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 12, 2016
Oh, how I wish Stuart Kauffman had waited a few years before writing this book, instead of presenting us with so many "what-ifs" and "promising results" and "lines of research to pursue." It would have given the research out there time to catch up with his theories, it would have given the publisher a chance to get a decent editor to fix text that reads like it was dictated over the phone, and it would have given Kauffman a chance to read more widely on issues that are of central importance to his argument, particularly continental philosophy (his philosophical background is in the Anglo-American analytic tradition), and especially phenomenology (the early works of Sartre on the imagination, for example, although, to be fair, Merleau-Ponty gets a look-in) and the complete works of Cornelius Castoriadis, who broached the topics of both human and natural creativity ex nihilo some 20 years ago. Nonetheless, this is a timely book, because the failure of reductive materialism to even comprehend the real nature of the hard problem of consciousness (indeed, it is incapable of grasping the precise nature of the problem by virtue of the paradigm it adopts), has meant that in recent years a very promising field has resurfaced, albeit inchoately, taking on various forms (in the field of ontology, it is represented by the "new materialists," in social theory, biology, and psychology by theories of autopoiesis and social imaginaries), a field that Kauffman approaches but with which he does not have the necessary familiarity to exploit or develop. In concluding the book, he tentatively touches on the need for a new Axial Age, an argument that has appeared in left-wing libertarian philosophy and which is enjoying a new vogue thanks to the various Occupy movements and Indignados inspired by the anthropological turn in socialist thought (and which traces one of its threads back to the aforementioned Castoriadis), but he seems unaware of the advances that have already been made in this area, and thus his work disappoints. One gets the feeling that he is on the "right track" but has been let down by the narrowness of his reading; that, just over the other side of the hill, there is a magnificent work waiting to be written by someone who has not just the scientific knowledge that Kauffman displays but also an understanding of how that knowledge relates to the cutting-edge social, psychological, philosophical, and political theories that are beginning to make themselves felt globally.
June 26, 2016
It's good to read books that you disagree with.
I suggest any readers to be cautious with this book.
To me, you need more than a paragraph of vague undefined terms to dismiss Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and using the Gillespie algorithm as a core argument for the failure of reductive materialism is nonsensical because of a key assumption that's glossed over in only one sentence - "Note that classical noise, such as temperature, is similarly acausal."
No. NO. Gaussian acausal noise is simply a useful way to model complexities, it does not in any way suggest that the underlying mechanisms are acausal. This is the same reasoning we apply to coin flips. The only "acausal noise" is in quantum measurement uncertainty which can be propagated by chaotic systems, but I think it's forgivable of reductive materialism to not be able to say exactly what will happen as long as it can express consequences in probabilities. In practice, this is sufficient for humanity.
And in practice, I would expect the vast majority of systems to be predictable with high confidence (>99.99%). There is always a non zero probability of some freak macro scale quantum tunneling event but we have the ability to accurately measure at fine enough scales that nearly all uncertainty should be eliminated in most scenarios. Note that that's just philosophical conjecturing on my part.
Please be careful of sweet words that make you feel like you're reading something well-thought-out.
I suggest any readers to be cautious with this book.
To me, you need more than a paragraph of vague undefined terms to dismiss Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and using the Gillespie algorithm as a core argument for the failure of reductive materialism is nonsensical because of a key assumption that's glossed over in only one sentence - "Note that classical noise, such as temperature, is similarly acausal."
No. NO. Gaussian acausal noise is simply a useful way to model complexities, it does not in any way suggest that the underlying mechanisms are acausal. This is the same reasoning we apply to coin flips. The only "acausal noise" is in quantum measurement uncertainty which can be propagated by chaotic systems, but I think it's forgivable of reductive materialism to not be able to say exactly what will happen as long as it can express consequences in probabilities. In practice, this is sufficient for humanity.
And in practice, I would expect the vast majority of systems to be predictable with high confidence (>99.99%). There is always a non zero probability of some freak macro scale quantum tunneling event but we have the ability to accurately measure at fine enough scales that nearly all uncertainty should be eliminated in most scenarios. Note that that's just philosophical conjecturing on my part.
Please be careful of sweet words that make you feel like you're reading something well-thought-out.
August 3, 2022
Kauffman is a master of intellectual speculation at the boundary between biology, physics (at times metaphysics, as it arguably happens here), complexity, and philosophy. This book proves it once more - in fact, it could be interpreted as the re-writing of the same, ideal book that would set humanity free in a deterministic universe as analyzed through reductivist eyes. This is the underlying attempt of Kauffman, which started with "At home in the universe" (divulgative rephrasing of much of the content first exposed in "Origins of order"), expanded with "Investigations" and later with "Reinventing the sacred". Kauffman has a goal: confirming humanity with its natural traits and features as not an exception but as expected in a universe that would not allow it, according to standard classical accounts propounded by physics' reductionist program. Kauffman has been on this quest since ever, and this book as mentioned is the latest, updated embodiment of his train of thought. Here his reasoning sprawls even more than ever, and this aspect is arguably the most interesting aspect of the book - the boldness and intellectual bravado to find arguments, loopholes and shortcuts that may break existing paradigms and propose vistas yet unseen but ultimately to be expected, if science is to justify and conform to human experience.
The first and third part of the book are to a large extent a summary of previous personal achievements and proposals (collectively autocatalytic sets, random Boolean networks, complexity arising rather independently of substrates, nonergodicity of the universe combined with an ever expanding Adjacent Possible where Actuals acausally enable new possibilities, so that the space of all possibilities cannot be explored let alone exausted, hence the idea of constant status nascendi without entailing laws for the biosphere, and perhaps the universe itself) enriched with updates and confirmations from his own and collateral works, which if anything confirm the interest and progress achieved along the lines that Kauffman started early on at the end of the '60s. Arguably here Kauffman is at his most confident, sharp, and even concise.
The more novel part is in fact the second, where the author ventures in the quantum domain to recover the legitimacy of the subjective experience, and proposes a solution to some of the enduring problems at the foundation of quantum mechanics by making ontological postulates (the real existence of Possibles (res potentia), which do not comply with the law of the excluded middle as compared to Actuals (res extensa), also real and linked to the first by quantum measurement, which is performed by consciousness (Mind, third element of his Triad)). His proposal endows all matter with consciousness (panspychism), so that quantum measurement is performed everywhere, and recurs to the quantum Zeno effect to justify the emergence of classical world from the quantum. Arguably this (set of) proposal(s) is drastic, not economic in Occam's sense, and largely located in the fringe of the available interpretations of quantum mechanics (Kauffman constantly refers to Penrose's Orchestrated Reduction and even to Heisenberg as precursors of his idea, which per se may not encourage a wider community to get interested); and while it purports to explain also very early and tentative evidence of mental influence on results of quantum experiments (due to Radin), it arguably suffers from misinterpretation of the quantum measurement (itself a pending issue in the field) and of quantum entanglement (he admits he is not a physicist, at least). If anything, Kauffman's interpretation adds to the bouquet of attempts to make sense of quantum mechanics by showing what it may ontologically cost to do it. He then combines his niche view with his additional, not well explained concept of the Poised Realm to justify criticality at molecular and larger size scales. Now, reading this acute heretic's speculations is engaging and stimulating - he is bold enough as an outsider not to care of established views, which must be encouraged - except for the author's extremely repetitive, self-referential, pedantic, stumbling, and ultimately not confident style in this long section.
Kauffman has been (and still is, as of the writing of this review) on a quest; and besides proposing (admittedly not so elegantly) his wild and at times vertiginous ideas, he makes a wide range of fitting references to philosophy and literature, as to himself bridge the gap between the two cultures as best as possible. It so happens that ultimately Kauffman ends up postulating what he really wishes for to justify human experience (i.e., classical physics only permits an epiphenomenal mind, to which he replies by positing mind as fundamental and located everywhere and connected to quantum measurement, as well as Possibles as ontologically real), instead of deriving it only, which is to an extent an underwhelming solution to the (admittedly overwhelming) task. Still, overall an inspiring read (if often times unnecessarily repetitive and self-referential) compiled by a relentlessly searching, caring and creative mind.
The first and third part of the book are to a large extent a summary of previous personal achievements and proposals (collectively autocatalytic sets, random Boolean networks, complexity arising rather independently of substrates, nonergodicity of the universe combined with an ever expanding Adjacent Possible where Actuals acausally enable new possibilities, so that the space of all possibilities cannot be explored let alone exausted, hence the idea of constant status nascendi without entailing laws for the biosphere, and perhaps the universe itself) enriched with updates and confirmations from his own and collateral works, which if anything confirm the interest and progress achieved along the lines that Kauffman started early on at the end of the '60s. Arguably here Kauffman is at his most confident, sharp, and even concise.
The more novel part is in fact the second, where the author ventures in the quantum domain to recover the legitimacy of the subjective experience, and proposes a solution to some of the enduring problems at the foundation of quantum mechanics by making ontological postulates (the real existence of Possibles (res potentia), which do not comply with the law of the excluded middle as compared to Actuals (res extensa), also real and linked to the first by quantum measurement, which is performed by consciousness (Mind, third element of his Triad)). His proposal endows all matter with consciousness (panspychism), so that quantum measurement is performed everywhere, and recurs to the quantum Zeno effect to justify the emergence of classical world from the quantum. Arguably this (set of) proposal(s) is drastic, not economic in Occam's sense, and largely located in the fringe of the available interpretations of quantum mechanics (Kauffman constantly refers to Penrose's Orchestrated Reduction and even to Heisenberg as precursors of his idea, which per se may not encourage a wider community to get interested); and while it purports to explain also very early and tentative evidence of mental influence on results of quantum experiments (due to Radin), it arguably suffers from misinterpretation of the quantum measurement (itself a pending issue in the field) and of quantum entanglement (he admits he is not a physicist, at least). If anything, Kauffman's interpretation adds to the bouquet of attempts to make sense of quantum mechanics by showing what it may ontologically cost to do it. He then combines his niche view with his additional, not well explained concept of the Poised Realm to justify criticality at molecular and larger size scales. Now, reading this acute heretic's speculations is engaging and stimulating - he is bold enough as an outsider not to care of established views, which must be encouraged - except for the author's extremely repetitive, self-referential, pedantic, stumbling, and ultimately not confident style in this long section.
Kauffman has been (and still is, as of the writing of this review) on a quest; and besides proposing (admittedly not so elegantly) his wild and at times vertiginous ideas, he makes a wide range of fitting references to philosophy and literature, as to himself bridge the gap between the two cultures as best as possible. It so happens that ultimately Kauffman ends up postulating what he really wishes for to justify human experience (i.e., classical physics only permits an epiphenomenal mind, to which he replies by positing mind as fundamental and located everywhere and connected to quantum measurement, as well as Possibles as ontologically real), instead of deriving it only, which is to an extent an underwhelming solution to the (admittedly overwhelming) task. Still, overall an inspiring read (if often times unnecessarily repetitive and self-referential) compiled by a relentlessly searching, caring and creative mind.
December 28, 2017
Stuart Kauffman has been a favorite of mine for some time. He is an imaginative and thorough thinker and his ideas have spawned entirely new areas of research. He is probably the living scientist I would most like to have dinner with. I've read a handful of his books in the last few years, and I was eager to get my hands on this, his most recent work.
Update: I would HIGHLY recommend you read Ilya Prigogine's book The End of Certainty before you read Humanity in a Creative Universe. Prigogine discusses a many of the same concepts, but introduces and develops them so they become available to the reader. You will be far less confused by Kauffman if you read Prigogine first.
The first half of Humanity in a Creative Universe does not disappoint. Kauffman continues to pursue the lines of thought he is most well known for and takes them to the next step, citing results from researchers he has inspired as well as his own work. I have a few quibbles in the early chapters, mostly related to missing definitions. That is, if you haven't read his past books, concepts he refers to frequently, such as the adjacent possible, will cause quite a bit of confusion because he does not define them. But not only that, it took me several chapters to finally understand what he meant by "entailed." And though he talks about the "subjective pole" through the entire book, I still don't fully understand what he means. There is also the assumption that you are very familiar with the writings of Descartes, or that you know latin. This only makes it harder to follow along in his thinking.
Though it starts well, the quality of the content goes down with chapter number. By the middle of the book there have been so many wish-washy statements about what may or may not be the case that continuing on with the book became more difficult. His repeated referral to Dean Radin's recent "results" do not help Kauffman's credibility. (If Radin's contention that simply paying mental attention to an experiment can alter its outcome, then don't we have to dismiss the entirety of historical experimental results?) I was disappointed by his departure from his traditional style; the content became more difficult to follow, and my willingness to work at understanding it had diminished.
By the end of the book we have run on paragraphs about quantum mechanics, TARP (yes, the Toxic Asset Repurchase Program), and the Dodd-Frank act. If Kauffman's goal in the early chapters was to establish a basis for his conclusions, I daresay he misses the mark. It ends up wandering in logic and requires a significant amount of mental effort to follow his linkage of where he begins to where he ends conceptually.
Others have remarked that this book lacked sufficient editorial oversight. I second this. Strongly. Kauffman is certainly a thinker at the forefront of his field. A stronger hand in editing likely would have helped him to walk the reader down the book's otherwise logically winding path. Though I did find the content mostly interesting, this is not Kauffman's best work. Granted, his corpus sets high standards for that goal, but Humanity in a Creative Universe falls short of its potential.
Update: I would HIGHLY recommend you read Ilya Prigogine's book The End of Certainty before you read Humanity in a Creative Universe. Prigogine discusses a many of the same concepts, but introduces and develops them so they become available to the reader. You will be far less confused by Kauffman if you read Prigogine first.
The first half of Humanity in a Creative Universe does not disappoint. Kauffman continues to pursue the lines of thought he is most well known for and takes them to the next step, citing results from researchers he has inspired as well as his own work. I have a few quibbles in the early chapters, mostly related to missing definitions. That is, if you haven't read his past books, concepts he refers to frequently, such as the adjacent possible, will cause quite a bit of confusion because he does not define them. But not only that, it took me several chapters to finally understand what he meant by "entailed." And though he talks about the "subjective pole" through the entire book, I still don't fully understand what he means. There is also the assumption that you are very familiar with the writings of Descartes, or that you know latin. This only makes it harder to follow along in his thinking.
Though it starts well, the quality of the content goes down with chapter number. By the middle of the book there have been so many wish-washy statements about what may or may not be the case that continuing on with the book became more difficult. His repeated referral to Dean Radin's recent "results" do not help Kauffman's credibility. (If Radin's contention that simply paying mental attention to an experiment can alter its outcome, then don't we have to dismiss the entirety of historical experimental results?) I was disappointed by his departure from his traditional style; the content became more difficult to follow, and my willingness to work at understanding it had diminished.
By the end of the book we have run on paragraphs about quantum mechanics, TARP (yes, the Toxic Asset Repurchase Program), and the Dodd-Frank act. If Kauffman's goal in the early chapters was to establish a basis for his conclusions, I daresay he misses the mark. It ends up wandering in logic and requires a significant amount of mental effort to follow his linkage of where he begins to where he ends conceptually.
Others have remarked that this book lacked sufficient editorial oversight. I second this. Strongly. Kauffman is certainly a thinker at the forefront of his field. A stronger hand in editing likely would have helped him to walk the reader down the book's otherwise logically winding path. Though I did find the content mostly interesting, this is not Kauffman's best work. Granted, his corpus sets high standards for that goal, but Humanity in a Creative Universe falls short of its potential.
June 22, 2016
Humanity in a Creative Universe is yet another insightful general science book from Stuart A. Kauffman that challenges at the same time it informs. This is not a simple read but it is also not a particularly difficult read either. Any additional information the reader needs to look up will be richly rewarded by Kauffman's integration of that knowledge into a larger narrative.
There are plenty of reviews that address the particulars of the science discussed, each reflecting both the reviewer's interests as well as the author's work. If the main thing you are looking for is a good book that provides wonderful discussions on topical scientific issues, this book will absolutely satisfy that desire and I highly recommend it on those terms. Rather than mention any specific areas I found especially interesting I'll give my own big picture takeaway from the book (which may or may not coincide with another reader's reception).
As we have gained so much knowledge and answered so many questions, and of course generated many more questions to be answered, we have become so focused on the particular, on the minuscule in some ways, that we seem to almost be following a guide that says "once you have ascertained x, your next goal is to ascertain y." This is not entirely bad, we have to build on what came before. The danger, to paraphrase an old saying, is that we could lose sight of the forest for the trees. It is in looking larger that we can use our creativity most effectively. So we make discoveries at the nano scale, excellent and important, but in addition to pointing toward the next discovery at that scale we need to see what it might say or suggest about, for example, the organism as a whole, about the ecosystem as a whole, etc.
I don't want to put words in Kauffman's mouth or claim my understanding as his purpose. What I want a potential reader to take from this review is that this book can make you think, can perhaps make you see whatever it is you do from a different perspective as well as teach you something about science. In doing so, it might (re)kindle your creativity and help to make your life, life in general, and society better. I know, this is beyond the intended scope and may just be me blathering about the effect it had on me. But hey, its my review and this was what I got from the book.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
There are plenty of reviews that address the particulars of the science discussed, each reflecting both the reviewer's interests as well as the author's work. If the main thing you are looking for is a good book that provides wonderful discussions on topical scientific issues, this book will absolutely satisfy that desire and I highly recommend it on those terms. Rather than mention any specific areas I found especially interesting I'll give my own big picture takeaway from the book (which may or may not coincide with another reader's reception).
As we have gained so much knowledge and answered so many questions, and of course generated many more questions to be answered, we have become so focused on the particular, on the minuscule in some ways, that we seem to almost be following a guide that says "once you have ascertained x, your next goal is to ascertain y." This is not entirely bad, we have to build on what came before. The danger, to paraphrase an old saying, is that we could lose sight of the forest for the trees. It is in looking larger that we can use our creativity most effectively. So we make discoveries at the nano scale, excellent and important, but in addition to pointing toward the next discovery at that scale we need to see what it might say or suggest about, for example, the organism as a whole, about the ecosystem as a whole, etc.
I don't want to put words in Kauffman's mouth or claim my understanding as his purpose. What I want a potential reader to take from this review is that this book can make you think, can perhaps make you see whatever it is you do from a different perspective as well as teach you something about science. In doing so, it might (re)kindle your creativity and help to make your life, life in general, and society better. I know, this is beyond the intended scope and may just be me blathering about the effect it had on me. But hey, its my review and this was what I got from the book.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
May 8, 2016
This is a book of wonderful thoughts and questions that suffers, occasionally, from being portentous and repetitious. Anyway, a sampling of my favorite parts:
Efforts to unite quantum mechanics with general relativity have failed since 1927. We may find a way, or we may be lost in the wrong forest trying to do so. (p. 8)
and
You can still get to the moon using Newton, general relativity is highly confirmed, and quantum mechanics is confirmed to eleven decimal places. But no laws at all entail the specific evolution of the biosphere. Reductionism and reductive materialism fail as a general view of reality. (p. 75)
and
Classical physics cannot yield a nonepiphenomenal consciousness, nor can it yield a counterfactually different present; hence, it has no hope to allow for a responsible free will that could have chosen differently. (p. 114)
and
Being alive in the world is more important than knowing. ... Earliest life may have known and been able to choose with some form of free will, but it could have chosen otherwise, the present could have been, counterfactually, different, and life is not a classical physics machine. (p. 244)
and most essentially
We give our faith to science and rationality. From this and our adoration of technology, from washing machines to thousands of apps, comes the overwrought scientism that smirks at "spirituality" as unseeming, foolish, or, in the strongest case among the neo-atheists, overconfident in their science, that any belief in any form of God, monotheistic or not, is stupid. (p. 261)
It remains better to live than know.
Efforts to unite quantum mechanics with general relativity have failed since 1927. We may find a way, or we may be lost in the wrong forest trying to do so. (p. 8)
and
You can still get to the moon using Newton, general relativity is highly confirmed, and quantum mechanics is confirmed to eleven decimal places. But no laws at all entail the specific evolution of the biosphere. Reductionism and reductive materialism fail as a general view of reality. (p. 75)
and
Classical physics cannot yield a nonepiphenomenal consciousness, nor can it yield a counterfactually different present; hence, it has no hope to allow for a responsible free will that could have chosen differently. (p. 114)
and
Being alive in the world is more important than knowing. ... Earliest life may have known and been able to choose with some form of free will, but it could have chosen otherwise, the present could have been, counterfactually, different, and life is not a classical physics machine. (p. 244)
and most essentially
We give our faith to science and rationality. From this and our adoration of technology, from washing machines to thousands of apps, comes the overwrought scientism that smirks at "spirituality" as unseeming, foolish, or, in the strongest case among the neo-atheists, overconfident in their science, that any belief in any form of God, monotheistic or not, is stupid. (p. 261)
It remains better to live than know.
July 10, 2016
I wanted to like it. there's lots of interesting ideas. However, the writing regularly gets extremely clunky and repetitive. Having read three other books by Kaufman, all I can think is that he didn't do a decent second-pass on his editing; he's capable of much better. Also, there's a bad tendency for the claims to not follow from the evidence, or for the evidence to be a long way from supporting the grandkids claims. There's no actual argument here that quantum effects in the brain leads to free will; just arguments that there are quantum effects, and then poof magic.
January 2, 2017
Not exactly the easiest read but interesting concepts that tie together ideas about evolution and free will / determinism. Well worth reading but at times it felt like I was reading the meandering notes of someone much smarter than me. Some background is physics and biology would help.
January 2, 2018
Some interesting ideas, ranging across biology, physics, culture, and philosophy. Needed an editor. The latter half in particular felt like a second draft. Kauffman sketches out a kind of panpsychism in which Actuals, Possibles, and Mind are ontologically fundamental, and contrasts that with a reductionist worldview built on Newton, Darwin, Locke, and Smith, which he calls our mythic structure. Basically he wants to bring free will and subjectivity back into the fold and re-enchant the world based on a reinterpretation of quantum physics and the introduction of quantum biology.
I couldn't follow all the physics (some graphs would've been helpful), and I'm sure physicists would have a few things to say about a theoretical biologist's quantum speculations. Still, I like how he creates his own vocabulary (e.g. the Poised Realm, the unprestatable Adjacent Possible)--thinking by neology. And his vision of a self-organising, co-creative universe that is constantly coming into being and opening up new possibilities is something I'll take away, along with the call to create a new myth, even though the conclusion fails to bring it all together in a satisfying way.
Thought-provoking, despite being a bit of a slog.
I couldn't follow all the physics (some graphs would've been helpful), and I'm sure physicists would have a few things to say about a theoretical biologist's quantum speculations. Still, I like how he creates his own vocabulary (e.g. the Poised Realm, the unprestatable Adjacent Possible)--thinking by neology. And his vision of a self-organising, co-creative universe that is constantly coming into being and opening up new possibilities is something I'll take away, along with the call to create a new myth, even though the conclusion fails to bring it all together in a satisfying way.
Thought-provoking, despite being a bit of a slog.
October 17, 2017
A step further
Stuart Kauffman is perhaps the most intriguing author of our age. Each book is a part of the same one book about complexity, but each one brings at least one new important aspect. There are quite some of them in this one, but for me the most important is a conclusion that not only matter and spirit evelve, but basic laws as well (perhaps). Such solution would make multiverse theory obsolete and would fill some gaps in big bang theory.
But then: you should read it and not read my comments.
Stuart Kauffman is perhaps the most intriguing author of our age. Each book is a part of the same one book about complexity, but each one brings at least one new important aspect. There are quite some of them in this one, but for me the most important is a conclusion that not only matter and spirit evelve, but basic laws as well (perhaps). Such solution would make multiverse theory obsolete and would fill some gaps in big bang theory.
But then: you should read it and not read my comments.
May 23, 2020
Could be a five-star book, but at this moment, can only comprehend three-stars of it.
Read
May 6, 2016576.8 K212 2016
June 3, 2020
I'm glad I read this, and need to give it another few reads.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews