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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, Stuart Kaufmann, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer
of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kaufmann
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 the forces for order that lie 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,
Kaufmann 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? Kaufmann 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. Kaufmann 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). Kaufmann 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, Kaufmann 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. Kaufmann's 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
writes 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
Kaufmann 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.
Stuart Kaufmann is a member of the Santa Fe Institute. A
MacArthur fellowship recipient, he is the leading thinker on self-organization
and the science of complexity as applied to biology. |
