Download or read book The Systems View of Life written by Fritjof Capra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume to integrate life's biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions into a single, coherent framework.
Download or read book The Emergence of Life written by Pier Luigi Luisi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-13 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Web of Life written by Fritjof Capra and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1997-09-15 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vitality and accessibility of Fritjof Capra's ideas have made him perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson of the latest findings emerging at the frontiers of scientific, social, and philosophical thought. In his international bestsellers The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point, he juxtaposed physics and mysticism to define a new vision of reality. In The Web of Life, Capra takes yet another giant step, setting forth a new scientific language to describe interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena--the "web of life." During the past twenty-five years, scientists have challenged conventional views of evolution and the organization of living systems and have developed new theories with revolutionary philosophical and social implications. Fritjof Capra has been at the forefront of this revolution. In The Web of Life, Capra offers a brilliant synthesis of such recent scientific breakthroughs as the theory of complexity, Gaia theory, chaos theory, and other explanations of the properties of organisms, social systems, and ecosystems. Capra's surprising findings stand in stark contrast to accepted paradigms of mechanism and Darwinism and provide an extraordinary new foundation for ecological policies that will allow us to build and sustain communities without diminishing the opportunities for future generations. Now available in paperback for the first time, The Web of Life is cutting-edge science writing in the tradition of James Gleick's Chaos, Gregory Bateson's Mind and Matter, and Ilya Prigogine's Order Out of Chaos.
Download or read book Uncommon Wisdom written by Fritjof Capra and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 1989 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synopsis coming soon.......
Download or read book Complex Systems Chaos and Beyond written by Kunihiko Kaneko and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first in a series on this subject, is the outcome of many years of efforts to give a new all-encompassing approach to complex systems in nature based on chaos theory. While maintaining a high level of rigor, the authors avoid an overly complicated mathematical apparatus, making the book accessible to a wider interdisciplinary readership.
Download or read book The Systems Mindset written by Sam Carpenter and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fix the machinery of your life . . . and serenity and wealth will follow. Starkly compelling in its simplicity, in The Systems Mindset: Managing the Machinery of Your Life, Sam Carpenter expands on the core inspirational element of his business bestseller, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, now in its third edition. Mindset is your path to quickly breaking free: to making a small tweak in how you see your world and then using that more accurate vision to get what you’ve always wanted from work, relationships, and health. When the systems mindset epiphany strikes, you will instantly see the visible and invisible machinery that determines your existence. With this startling new perception, you’ll see that your world is not a confusing array of sights, sounds, and events and, instead, grasp that it’s a simple and logical collection of systems, systems that can be quickly adjusted to deliver the life results you’ve always wanted. You will never be the same.
Download or read book Life Itself written by Robert Rosen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are living things alive? As a theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen saw this as the most fundamental of all questions-and yet it had never been answered satisfactorily by science. The answers to this question would allow humanity to make an enormous leap forward in our understanding of the principles at work in our world. For centuries, it was believed that the only scientific approach to the question "What is life?" must proceed from the Cartesian metaphor (organism as machine). Classical approaches in science, which also borrow heavily from Newtonian mechanics, are based on a process called "reductionism." The thinking was that we can better learn about an intricate, complicated system (like an organism) if we take it apart, study the components, and then reconstruct the system-thereby gaining an understanding of the whole. However, Rosen argues that reductionism does not work in biology and ignores the complexity of organisms. Life Itself, a landmark work, represents the scientific and intellectual journey that led Rosen to question reductionism and develop new scientific approaches to understanding the nature of life. Ultimately, Rosen proposes an answer to the original question about the causal basis of life in organisms. He asserts that renouncing the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm does not mean abandoning science. Instead, Rosen offers an alternate paradigm for science that takes into account the relational impacts of organization in natural systems and is based on organized matter rather than on particulate matter alone. Central to Rosen's work is the idea of a "complex system," defined as any system that cannot be fully understood by reducing it to its parts. In this sense, complexity refers to the causal impact of organization on the system as a whole. Since both the atom and the organism can be seen to fit that description, Rosen asserts that complex organization is a general feature not just of the biosphere on Earth-but of the universe itself.
Download or read book Thinking in Systems written by Donella Meadows and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2008-12-03 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.
Download or read book Learning from Leonardo written by Fritjof Capra and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist, engineer, mathematician, architect, inventor, and even musician—the archetypal Renaissance man. But he was also a profoundly modern man. Not only did Leonardo invent the empirical scientific method over a century before Galileo and Francis Bacon, but Capra's decade-long study of Leonardo's fabled notebooks reveals that he was a systems thinker centuries before the term was coined. At the very core of Leonardo's science, Capra argues, lies his persistent quest for understanding the nature of life. His science is a science of living forms, of qualities and patterns, radically different from the mechanistic science that emerged 200 years later. Because he saw the world as an integrated whole, Leonardo always applied concepts from one area to illuminate problems in another. His studies of the movement of water informed his ideas about how landscapes are shaped, how sap rises in plants, how air moves over a bird's wing, and how blood flows in the human body. His observations of nature enhanced his art, his drawings were integral to his scientific studies, and he brought art, science, and technology together in his beautiful and elegant mechanical and architectural designs. Capra describes seven defining characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci's genius and includes a list of over forty discoveries he made that weren't rediscovered until centuries later. Capra follows the organizational scheme Leonardo himself intended to use if he ever published his notebooks. So in a sense, this is Leonardo's science as he himself would have presented it. Obviously, we can't all be geniuses on the scale of Leonardo da Vinci. But his persistent endeavor to put life at the very center of his art, science, and design and his recognition that all natural phenomena are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent are important lessons we can learn from. By exploring the mind of the preeminent Renaissance genius, we can gain profound insights into how to address the complex challenges of the 21st century.
Download or read book The Ecology of Law written by Fritjof Capra and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Systems View of the World written by Ervin Laszlo and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Tao of Physics written by Fritjof Capra and published by Shambhala. This book was released on 1991 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author discusses his theories on how to synthesize the basic tenets of physics and Eastern mysticism in order to present a new vision of reality.
Download or read book Bringing Systems Thinking to Life written by Ona Cohn Bregman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a single volume, Bringing Systems Thinking to Life: Expanding the Horizons for Bowen Family Systems Theory presents the extraordinary diversity and breadth of Bowen theory applications that address human functioning in various relationship systems across a broad spectrum of professions, disciplines, cultures, and nations. Providing three chapters of never-before-published material by Dr. Bowen, the book also demonstrates the transcendent nature and versatility of Bowen theory-based social assessment and its extension into fields of study and practice far beyond the original psychiatric context in which it was first formulated including social work, psychology, nursing, education, literary studies, pastoral care and counseling, sociology, business and management, leadership studies, distance learning, ecological science, and evolutionary biology. Providing ample evidence that Bowen theory has joined that elite class of theories that have enjoyed broad application to social phenomena while lending credibility to the claim that Bowen theory is one of the previous and current centuries’ most significant social-behavioral theories. More than a “resource manual” for Bowen theory enthusiasts, this book helps put a new great theory on the intellectual landscape.
Download or read book Patterns of Connection written by Fritjof Capra and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fritjof Capra, scientist, educator, activist, and accomplished author, presents the evolution of his thought over five decades in Patterns of Connection. First introduced in the late 1950s to the work of Werner Heisenberg, a founder of quantum mechanics, Capra quickly intuited the connections between the discoveries of quantum physics and the traditions of Eastern philosophy—resulting in his first book, the bestselling The Tao of Physics. This synthesis, representative of the change from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton to a systemic, ecological one, went on to inform Capra’s thinking about the life sciences, ecology, and environmental policy. Today Fritjof Capra remains a major figure at the crossroads of physics, spirituality, environmentalism, and systems theory. Organized thematically and chronologically, the essays in Patterns of Connection document the revolutionary and far-reaching intellectual journey of one of the major public thinkers of the last half-century.
Download or read book Anticipatory Systems written by Robert Rosen and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first detailed study of this most important class of systems which contain internal predictive models of themselves and/or of their environments and whose predictions are utilized for purposes of present control. This book develops the basic concept of a predictive model, and shows how it can be embedded into a system of feedforward control. Includes many examples and stresses analogies between wired-in anticipatory control and processes of learning and adaption, at both individual and social levels. Shows how the basic theory of such systems throws a new light both on analytic problems (understanding what is going on in an organism or a social system) and synthetic ones (developing forecasting methods for making individual or collective decisions).
Download or read book Models of Life written by Kim Sneppen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of current models of biological systems, reflecting the major advances that have been made over the past decade.
Download or read book Life An Introduction to Complex Systems Biology written by Kunihiko Kaneko and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-09-14 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines life not from the reductionist point of view, but rather asks the questions: what are the universal properties of living systems, and how can one construct from there a phenomenological theory of life that leads naturally to complex processes such as reproductive cellular systems, evolution and differentiation? The presentation is relatively non-technical to appeal to a broad spectrum of students and researchers.
