|
There is a major report from the exciting
new frontier of complexity where the conjunction of computer
technology and revolutionary new scientific disciplines
is changing our view of reality. Physicist Heinz Pagels,
author of The Cosmic Code and Perfect Symmetry,
explains these new developments in science and their ramifications
with enthusiasm and elegant clarity. In The Dreams of
Reason, Pagels describes the philosophical and scientific
impact of the computer as an instrument of the new sciences
of complexity. He provides an extraordinary glimpse of the
civilization that will arise from the synthesis of technology
and the new sciences.
Unlike conventional research instruments,
the computer can simulate reality, creating models of complex
systems like the human body and brain, large molecules,
chaotic systems, neural nets, and the patterns of evolution
and population growth. Pagels shows how this capacity, and
the new vision of reality that the computer provides, will
affect the business and commercial worlds, the worlds of
finance, telecommunications, science, the legal profession,
and the military. He tells why the nations and people who
master the new sciences of complexity will be the economic,
cultural, and political superpowers of the next century.
A work of immediate importance and lasting significance,
The Dreams of Reason is an intriguing and accessible
vision of the future of man, the computer, and the sciences
of complexity.
Heinz Pagels is Executive Director of
the New York Academy of Sciences and Adjunct Professor at
the Rockefeller University. He is the author of The
Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature
and Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of
Time. Dr. Pagels lives in Manhattan with his wife, the
historian Elaine Pagels, and daughter Sarah.
|
