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Author: Steven Bratman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781667803159
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
"This is a serious, excellent piece of science writing ... Bratman's prose captures the core idea and gives a faithful rendering for a non-specialist audience" - Eric Smith, PhD. Coauthor of The Origin and Nature of Life: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Metabolism-First is a theory that claims life arose out of energy-driven organic chemistry in ancient hydrothermal vents. From this perspective, life is not a lucky accident but a logical consequence of early Earth conditions. Like many other processes driven by a flow of energy, the origin of life exemplifies the phenomena of spontaneous order. Metabolism-First views the biosphere as a feature of Earth as a whole, a companion to the hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere. Just as ordinary phase transitions change the properties of a liquid or gas, the biosphere can be viewed as emerging through a series of phase transitions operating on chemical reaction networks. A key concept of the theory is autocatalysis, the property of some chemicals to amplify their own rate of formation. Autocatalysis plays the same role in "chemical evolution" as Darwinian selection does in the standard theory of evolution. Additional key concepts include phase transformations, modularity and dissipative adaptation. The text includes a glossary and an annotated bibliography.
Author: Steven Bratman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781667803159
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Get Book Here
Book Description
"This is a serious, excellent piece of science writing ... Bratman's prose captures the core idea and gives a faithful rendering for a non-specialist audience" - Eric Smith, PhD. Coauthor of The Origin and Nature of Life: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Metabolism-First is a theory that claims life arose out of energy-driven organic chemistry in ancient hydrothermal vents. From this perspective, life is not a lucky accident but a logical consequence of early Earth conditions. Like many other processes driven by a flow of energy, the origin of life exemplifies the phenomena of spontaneous order. Metabolism-First views the biosphere as a feature of Earth as a whole, a companion to the hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere. Just as ordinary phase transitions change the properties of a liquid or gas, the biosphere can be viewed as emerging through a series of phase transitions operating on chemical reaction networks. A key concept of the theory is autocatalysis, the property of some chemicals to amplify their own rate of formation. Autocatalysis plays the same role in "chemical evolution" as Darwinian selection does in the standard theory of evolution. Additional key concepts include phase transformations, modularity and dissipative adaptation. The text includes a glossary and an annotated bibliography.
Author: Stuart A. Kauffman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199826676
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 958
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Book Description
Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order that is widely observed throughout nature Kauffman argues that self-organization plays an important role in the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt are poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biological science itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences.
Author: Stuart Kauffman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019984030X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
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, 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 science--and at the forces for order that lie at 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, Kauffman 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? Kauffman 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. Kauffman 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). Kauffman 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, Kauffman 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. And finally, there is a profoundly spiritual element to Kauffman's thought. If, as he argues, life were bound to arise, not as an incalculably improbable accident, but as an expected fulfillment of the natural order, then we truly are at home in the universe. Kauffman's earlier volume, 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 wrote 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 Kauffman 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.
Author: Peter J. Boettke
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199811768
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 833
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Book Description
The Austrian School of Economics is an intellectual tradition in economics and political economy dating back to Carl Menger in the late-19th century. Menger stressed the subjective nature of value in the individual decision calculus. Individual choices are indeed made on the margin, but the evaluations of rank ordering of ends sought in the act of choice are subjective to individual chooser. For Menger, the economic calculus was about scarce means being deployed to pursue an individual's highest valued ends. The act of choice is guided by subjective assessments of the individual, and is open ended as the individual is constantly discovering what ends to pursue, and learning the most effective way to use the means available to satisfy those ends. This school of economic thinking spread outside of Austria to the rest of Europe and the United States in the early-20th century and continued to develop and gain followers, establishing itself as a major stream of heterodox economics. The Oxford Handbook of Austrian Economics provides an overview of this school and its theories. The various contributions discussed in this book all reflect a tension between the Austrian School's orthodox argumentative structure (rational choice and invisible hand) and its addressing of a heterodox problem situations (uncertainty, differential knowledge, ceaseless change). The Austrian economists from the founders to today seek to derive the invisible hand theorem from the rational choice postulate via institutional analysis in a persistent and consistent manner. Scholars and students working in the field of History of Economic Thought, those following heterodox approaches, and those both familiar with the Austrian School or looking to learn more will find much to learn in this comprehensive volume.
Author: Pier Luigi Luisi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139455648
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
The origin of life from inanimate matter has been the focus of much research for decades, both experimentally and philosophically. Luisi takes the reader through the consecutive stages from prebiotic chemistry to synthetic biology, uniquely combining both approaches. This book presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms. A chapter is dedicated to each of these steps, using a number of synthetic and biological examples. With end-of-chapter review questions to aid reader comprehension, this book will appeal to graduate students and academics researching the origin of life and related areas such as evolutionary biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and natural sciences.
Author: Eric Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107121884
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 703
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Book Description
Uniting the foundations of physics and biology, this groundbreaking multidisciplinary and integrative book explores life as a planetary process.
Author: Iris Fry
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813527406
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
How did life emerge on Earth? Is there life on other worlds? These questions, until recently confined to the pages of speculative essays and tabloid headlines, are now the subject of legitimate scientific research. This book presents a unique perspective--a combined historical, scientific, and philosophical analysis, which does justice to the complex nature of the subject. The book's first part offers an overview of the main ideas on the origin of life as they developed from antiquity until the twentieth century. The second, more detailed part of the book examines contemporary theories and major debates within the origin-of-life scientific community. Topics include: Aristotle and the Greek atomists' conceptions of the organism Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane's 1920s breakthrough papers Possible life on Mars?
Author: Francisco J Varela
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9789401580557
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309042461
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
The field of planetary biology and chemical evolution draws together experts in astronomy, paleobiology, biochemistry, and space science who work together to understand the evolution of living systems. This field has made exciting discoveries that shed light on how organic compounds came together to form self-replicating molecules-the origin of life. This volume updates that progress and offers recommendations on research programs-including an ambitious effort centered on Mars-to advance the field over the next 10 to 15 years. The book presents a wide range of data and research results on these and other issues: The biogenic elements and their interaction in the interstellar clouds and in solar nebulae. Early planetary environments and the conditions that lead to the origin of life. The evolution of cellular and multicellular life. The search for life outside the solar system. This volume will become required reading for anyone involved in the search for life's beginnings-including exobiologists, geoscientists, planetary scientists, and U.S. space and science policymakers.
Author: James E. Strick
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044088
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
How, asks James E. Strick, could spontaneous generation--the idea that living things can suddenly arise from nonliving materials--come to take root for a time (even a brief one) in so thoroughly unsuitable a field as British natural theology? No less an authority than Aristotle claimed that cases of spontaneous generation were to be observed in nature, and the idea held sway for centuries. Beginning around the time of the Scientific Revolution, however, the doctrine was increasingly challenged; attempts to prove or disprove it led to important breakthroughs in experimental design and laboratory techniques, most notably sterilization methods, that became the cornerstones of modern microbiology and sped the ascendancy of the germ theory of disease. The Victorian debates, Strick shows, were entwined with the public controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution. While other histories of the debates between 1860 and 1880 have focused largely on the experiments of John Tyndall, Henry Charlton Bastian, and others, Sparks of Life emphasizes previously understudied changes in the theories that underlay the debates. Strick argues that the disputes cannot be understood without full knowledge of the factional infighting among Darwinians themselves, as they struggled to create a socially and scientifically viable form of Darwinian science. He shows that even the terms of the debate, such as biogenesis, usually but incorrectly attributed to Huxley, were intensely contested.
