Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be

by Tyler Volk

Atoms combine to form molecules, molecules combine to form single-celled organisms. When people come together, they build societies. Our world is nested, both physically and socially, and at each level we find innovations that were necessary for the next level. Physics has gone far in mapping the basic mechanics of the simplest things and dynamics of the overall nesting, as have biology and the social sciences for their fields. But what if anything can we say about this beautifully complex whole? Might there be general processes we can identify? How do phases shape others, and what more can we learn about human existence through understanding an enlarged field of creation and being? Quarks to Culture explores the rhythm within what Tyler Volk calls the "grand sequence," a series of levels of sizes and innovations building from elementary quanta to globalized human civilization. The key is "combogenesis," the building-up from combination and integration to produce new things with innovative relations. Themes unfold in how physics and chemistry led to biological evolution, and biological evolution to cultural evolution. Volk develops an inclusive natural philosophy that brings clarity to our place in the world, a roadmap for our minds. As combogenesis repeats, patterns enrich like an expanding musical progression. Quarks to Culture provides new insights into linkages in our sciences and presents an exciting synthesis of ideas across a sequence of things and relations, from physical to living to cultural. It is high adventure for readers who seek to understand big history and wrestle with questions of how we came to be.

Genres: Science

288 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2017

About the author

Tyler Volk is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at New York University. Volk is an active proponent of the Gaia hypothesis. A 1989 study, co-authored by Volk, published in the journal Nature asserts that without the cooling effects of living things, Earth would be 80 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Reviews

[Always Pouting · Rating 3 out of 5]

The person who wrote this is clearly well read and intelligent but I do think the ideas he was trying to express could've been expressed much more simply. The book is well written but it's a little round about with the ideas it's trying to get across. It covers the basics of physics, chemistry, biology and then goes into sociology and anthropology and ecology to explore the way systems are set up. I don't think it's such a revolutionary idea that you take a few basic building blocks and use them to building things of infinite more complexity again and again. Also the ideas about culture really reminded me of Richard Dawkin's whole proposal of memes and I think that idea is much better developed then what the author was trying to propose. The ideas are really interesting but I was expecting much more integrating ones that would tie the whole thing together, like what systems seem to work or more on the patterns things tend to fall into in the universe. A lot of those ideas have been expressed in other books much more clearly but not been explored and so that's more what I was looking from in this book. I do think it's good for anyone who wants to know more about how things are built because he starts at the quark level and builds up and does so in a very accessible way. The book is probably much more suited to someone interested in structure of things and wants to learn more about the basic of various sciences and where there may be overlap.

[GONZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant book that explore our life from the beginning (quark, atoms, molecules etc.etc.) till the actual situations: nations. Key words for this travel trough time are combogenesis and alphakit. All the situations are clearly explained and the author is also witty and funny, plus this is a way to see the evolution of things that I have never considered.

Libro brillante che esplora la nostra esistenza dagli inizi (quark, nucleoni, atomi, molecole, etc.etc.) fino all'attuale situazione geopolitica. Le parole chiave per questo viaggio nel tempo sono compbogenesi ed alphakit. Tutti i capitoli sono spiegati in modo chiaro e divertente inoltre, ´questo é un modo di vedere il mondo che non avevo mai considerato.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

[M- S__ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for feedback and review.

Volk tries chart a course from the laws and facts of the smallest and most fundamental aspects of nature up through the myriad social systems of complex culture and loses me about 50 pages in. It's just too big an undertaking for a 300 page book.

The concept of combogenesis has that "oh wow obviously yeah that could make total sense" quality to it, but there's no room for him to make a more nuanced argument for it in this book because it is so ambitious. The book substitutes thoughtful discussion of alternative interpretations at each step with single sentence references to an endless number of studies that I have no interest in tracking down. I'm sure they all strongly support his point, but it makes the reading a bit of a slog.

The author also does this distracting compulsive thing where he apologizes for getting "too philosophical" anytime he touches something approaching philosophy. It kind of undercuts his authority in the entire last third of the book.

I think this book just wasn't for me. I can see where it would be a decent quick read for someone who reads more science books than me, and I can see where it could definitely open up a lot of avenues for further reading. It has the potential to be a good launchpad. I just came out of it feeling a little bewildered though.

[Matthew Hendel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book begins with 12 chapters on different layers in a hierarchy from “Quarks to Culture”. The technical descriptions of the different layers is good, and the argument is interesting that new properties emerge as you traverse the 12 layers that Volk outlines from quarks to culture. But, he gets bogged down in oddball terminology and grasping to make connections where maybe they don’t exist.

To take some examples, Volk coins the term combogenesis to discuss a set of objects (atoms, cells, etc.) that can be viewed qualitatively differently when looking at them as a group vs. as just a set of single objects. Think about looking at fluids or gasses as a single thing (fluid) with some properties vs. trying the analyze the behavior of each molecule.

While combogenesis is a ugly word, I was able to live with it, but tribal metagroups and agrovillages is just a bit too much for my taste. In the end, I feel like Volk obscured what he was trying to discuss versus illuminating it.

More than this, though, it’s not clear to me that the core thesis holds, i.e., that there is much in common that we can analyze in common in the transitions between atoms and molecules, and tribes and villages. The 12 chapters that cover Volk’s different layers are well written, and if you can overlook the language, they’re fine reading. But the chapters at the end where the larger synthesis is done are frankly very tough to read. For me, these final chapters read much more like a first year graduate student trying to piece together random words that she or he has read somewhere versus a sustained, clear argument.

For a much clearer treatment of some of the same material, consider Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies which is in some sense both less ambitious, but also much more detailed.

In the end, I cannot recommend this book.

[Kevin Marshall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Low amount of research into topic

Missed the boat. Ken wilbur & spiral dynamics & integral theory cover this topic much better & in depth. If author had done a cursory literature search he would have written a much better book

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought-provoking and spirited intellectual exercise, this book goes all the way from Big Bang to Big Ben to ask if there is a universal pattern in how our world is organised. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2019...