Download or read book Chaos and Life written by Richard J. Bird and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-26 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people's everyday existence. Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding world. This book proposes an alternative view of evolving complexity. Bird argues that randomness means not disorder but infinite order. Complexity arises not from many random events of natural selection (although these are not unimportant) but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems—which are best described mathematically. When we properly understand the complex interplay of chaos and life, Bird contends, we will see that many events that appear random are actually the outcome of order.
Download or read book Chaos and Order written by N. Katherine Hayles and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific discovery that chaotic systems embody deep structures of order is one of such wide-ranging implications that it has attracted attention across a spectrum of disciplines, including the humanities. In this volume, fourteen theorists explore the significance for literary and cultural studies of the new paradigm of chaotics, forging connections between contemporary literature and the science of chaos. They examine how changing ideas of order and disorder enable new readings of scientific and literary texts, from Newton's Principia to Ruskin's autobiography, from Victorian serial fiction to Borges's short stories. N. Katherine Hayles traces shifts in meaning that chaos has undergone within the Western tradition, suggesting that the science of chaos articulates categories that cannot be assimilated into the traditional dichotomy of order and disorder. She and her contributors take the relation between order and disorder as a theme and develop its implications for understanding texts, metaphors, metafiction, audience response, and the process of interpretation itself. Their innovative and diverse work opens the interdisciplinary field of chaotics to literary inquiry.
Download or read book Order Out of Chaos written by Ilya Prigogine and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering book that shows how the two great themes of classic science, order and chaos, are being reconciled in a new and unexpected synthesis Order Out of Chaos is a sweeping critique of the discordant landscape of modern scientific knowledge. In this landmark book, Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and acclaimed philosopher Isabelle Stengers offer an exciting and accessible account of the philosophical implications of thermodynamics. Prigogine and Stengers bring contradictory philosophies of time and chance into a novel and ambitious synthesis. Since its first publication in France in 1978, this book has sparked debate among physicists, philosophers, literary critics and historians.
Download or read book Order Chaos Order written by Philip Stehle and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the confusion among physicists at the beginning of the 20th century when experimental findings kept not fitting into their mechanical view of the universe, the theoretical speculations and experimental innovations they responded with, and the new science that emerged. The mathematical details are set apart in boxes to allow nontechnical readers to engage the flow of the narrative uninterrupted. Paper edition (unseen), $29.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Origins of Order written by Stuart A. Kauffman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-06-10 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Order and Chaos in Dynamical Astronomy written by George Contopoulos and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is one of the first to provide a general overview of order and chaos in dynamical astronomy. The progress of the theory of chaos has a profound impact on galactic dynamics. It has even invaded celestial mechanics, since chaos was found in the solar system which in the past was considered as a prototype of order. The book provides a unifying approach to these topics from an author who has spent more than 50 years of research in the field. The first part treats order and chaos in general. The other two parts deal with order and chaos in galaxies and with other applications in dynamical astronomy, ranging from celestial mechanics to general relativity and cosmology.
Download or read book Evolution of Order and Chaos written by Hermann Haken and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These proceedings contain the invited lectures presented at the International Sym posium on Synergetics at Schloss Elmau in April, 1982. This symposium marked the th 10 anniversary of symposia on synergetics, the first of which was held at Schloss Elmau in 1972. As is now weIl known, these symposia are devoted to the study of the formation of structures in physical systems far from thermal equilibrium, as weIl as in nonphysical systems such as those in biology and sociology. While the first proceedings were published by Teubner Publishing Company in 1973 and the second by North Holland Publishing Company in 1974, the subsequent proceed ings have been published in the Springer Series in Synergetics. I believe that these proceedings give a quite faithful picture of the developments in this new interdisciplinary field over the past decade. As H.J. Queisser recently noted, the prefix "non", which is used quite frequent ly in modern scientific literature in words such as "nonequilibrium", "nonlinear", etc., indicates a new development in scientific thinking. Indeed, this new develop ment was anticipated and given a framework in the introduction of "synergetics" more than a decade ago.
Download or read book A Blessed Rage for Order written by Alex Argyros and published by Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theorizing about the place of human culture in cosmic evolution
Download or read book Life s Ratchet written by Peter M. Hoffmann and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life, Hoffman argues, emerges from the random motions of atoms filtered through the sophisticated structures of our evolved machinery. People are essentially giant assemblies of interacting nanoscale machines.
Download or read book Complexity written by M. Mitchell Waldrop and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you liked Chaos, you’ll love Complexity. Waldrop creates the most exciting intellectual adventure story of the year” (The Washington Post). In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell—and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today. This book is their story—the story of how they have tried to forge what they like to call the science of the twenty-first century. “Lucidly shows physicists, biologists, computer scientists and economists swapping metaphors and reveling in the sense that epochal discoveries are just around the corner . . . [Waldrop] has a special talent for relaying the exhilaration of moments of intellectual insight.” —The New York Times Book Review “Where I enjoyed the book was when it dove into the actual question of complexity, talking about complex systems in economics, biology, genetics, computer modeling, and so on. Snippets of rare beauty here and there almost took your breath away.” —Medium “[Waldrop] provides a good grounding of what may indeed be the first flowering of a new science.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book EVOLUTION OF ORDER AND CHAOS IN PHYSICS CHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY written by Hermann Haken and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Chaos and Order written by Friedrich Cramer and published by Wiley-VCH. This book was released on 1993-10-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is life? How do ideas arise in our brain? Is there a vital force? Recent progress in biological research has had a profound effect on our perception of nature. A deeper understanding of nonlinear systems far from equilibrium and of self-organization are no longer outside the scope of science. Professor Friedrich Cramer, who is well known for his contributions in the field of molecular biology, uses his own insights as a starting point for developing an overall picture of the great questions that have always fascinated mankind. From reviews of the German edition: 'Chaos and Order is the work of a man who rejects a fragmented view of the universe, who refuses to be a prisoner of preconceived doctrines. There is a feeling of excitement, a feeling that we are living at a unique moment in the history of science. The world appears to us at the same time as more strange, but also as more connected and more harmonious, than to any of the generations which have preceded us. I can only hope that Cramer's book will inspire many readers and will receive the international acclaim that it fully deserves.' Angewandte Chemie
Download or read book Deep Simplicity written by John Gribbin and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Gribbin takes us through the basics with his customary talent for accessibility and clarity' Sunday Times The world around us can be a complex, confusing place. Earthquakes happen without warning, stock markets fluctuate, weather forecasters seldom seem to get it right - even other people continue to baffle us. How do we make sense of it all? In fact, John Gribbin reveals, our seemingly random universe is actually built on simple laws of cause and effect that can explain why, for example, just one vehicle braking can cause a traffic jam; why wild storms result from a slight atmospheric change; even how we evolved from the most basic materials. Like a zen painting, a fractal image or the pattern on a butterfly's wings, simple elements form the bedrock of a sophisticated whole. Synthesizing chaos and complexity theory for the perplexed, Deep Simplicity brilliantly illuminates the harmony underlying our existence.
Download or read book The Theory of Ecology written by Samuel M. Scheiner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite claims to the contrary, the science of ecology has a long history of building theories. Many ecological theories are mathematical, computational, or statistical, though, and rarely have attempts been made to organize or extrapolate these models into broader theories. The Theory of Ecology brings together some of the most respected and creative theoretical ecologists of this era to advance a comprehensive, conceptual articulation of ecological theories. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, from ecological niche theory to population dynamic theory to island biogeography theory. Collectively, the chapters ably demonstrate how theory in ecology accounts for observations about the natural world and how models provide predictive understandings. It organizes these models into constitutive domains that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of ecological understanding. This book is a milestone in ecological theory and is certain to motivate future empirical and theoretical work in one of the most exciting and active domains of the life sciences.
Download or read book Chaos of Disciplines written by Andrew Abbott and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vital new study, Andrew Abbott presents a fresh and daring analysis of the evolution and development of the social sciences. Chaos of Disciplines reconsiders how knowledge actually changes and advances. Challenging the accepted belief that social sciences are in a perpetual state of progress, Abbott contends that disciplines instead cycle around an inevitable pattern of core principles. New schools of thought, then, are less a reaction to an established order than they are a reinvention of fundamental concepts. Chaos of Disciplines uses fractals to explain the patterns of disciplines, and then applies them to key debates that surround the social sciences. Abbott argues that knowledge in different disciplines is organized by common oppositions that function at any level of theoretical or methodological scale. Opposing perspectives of thought and method, then, in fields ranging from history, sociology, and literature, are to the contrary, radically similar; much like fractals, they are each mutual reflections of their own distinctions.
Download or read book The End of Certainty written by Ilya Prigogine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1997-08-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine discusses the irreversibility of time and his findings impact on the laws of physics.
Download or read book Chaos and Life written by Richard J. Bird and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-26 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why, in a scientific age, do people routinely turn to astrologers, mediums, cultists, and every kind of irrational practitioner rather than to science to meet their spiritual needs? The answer, according to Richard J. Bird, is that science, especially biology, has embraced a view of life that renders meaningless the coincidences, serendipities, and other seemingly significant occurrences that fill people's everyday existence. Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the surrounding world. This book proposes an alternative view of evolving complexity. Bird argues that randomness means not disorder but infinite order. Complexity arises not from many random events of natural selection (although these are not unimportant) but from the "playing out" of chaotic systems—which are best described mathematically. When we properly understand the complex interplay of chaos and life, Bird contends, we will see that many events that appear random are actually the outcome of order.
