At home in the universe : the search for laws of self-organization and complexity
Stuart A. Kauffman (Author)
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 giant 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 evidence - and at the forces for order that lie at the edge of chaos. What we are now only discovering, Kauffman says, is that the range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed and, in fact, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. He contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization - what Kauffman calls "order for free"--And that if enough different sized molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity: a living cell. In turn, Kauffman extends this new paradigm to economic and cultural systems, showing that all may evolve according to similar general laws. An exciting exploration into the nature of life, At Home in the Universe provides stunning insights into a new scientific revolution. -- from back cover
1 online resource (viii, 321 pages) : illustrations
9780199761852, 019976185X
1085905221
At home in the universe
Origins of life
We the expected
Order for free
Mystery of ontogeny
Noah's vessel
Promised land
High-country adventures
Organisms and artifacts
Hour upon the stage
In search of excellence
Emerging global civilization
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2019