At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity | 
 enlarge | Author: Stuart Kauffman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
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Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 84126
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 0195111303
Dewey Decimal Number: 577
EAN: 9780195111309
ASIN: 0195111303
Publication Date: November 21, 1996
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Amazon.com Review
The best treatment I have yet encountered about how order emerges naturally -- and possibly even necessarily -- out of chaos. Profoundly important, and considerably more informed than better-known pop-science treatments of chaos theory. Very highly recommended.
Product 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. What we are now only discovering, Kauffman says, is that range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed and, in fact, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. He contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization--what Kauffman calls "order for free"--and that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity: a living cell. There is a phase transition when water abruptly turns to ice. Likewise, life may have originated when the mix of different molecules in the primordial soup passed a certain level of complexity and re-grouped into living entities (if so, then life is not a highly improbable chance event, but almost inevitable). Using the basic insight of "order for free" Kauffman illuminates a staggering range of phenomena. Darwin's natural selection has not acted alone, but in a persistent marriage with self-organization to create the majesty of the biosphere. A new slant can also be applied to the field of genetic engineering wherein trillions of novel molecules can be generated to find new drugs, vaccines, and enzymes. Kauffman extends this new paradigm to economic and cultural systems, showing that all may evolve according to similar general laws. An exciting exploration into the nature of life, At Home in the Universe provides stunning insights into a new scientific revolution.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 55 more reviews...
 Utterly transformative ideas - presented in a frequently annoying way. December 29, 2008
Stuart Kauffman is a brilliant renaissance man; a man who was a playwright, philosopher, physician, and ultimately seminal theorist of the principles of complexity and emergence at the Santa Fe Institute. His ideas are widely influential, groundbreaking, and bear upon the largest questions: what is the origin of life? In the face of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, what explains the richness of order we observe all around us? What are the underlying mathematical principles of emergent phenomena? What are the underlying mathematical principles of evolution (both natural and technological)? Indeed, until Kauffman, I had trouble defining evolution without a tautology at all (i.e. "evolution is survival of the fittest - and 'the fittest' are defined as the ones who survive"). Kauffman gives you a lexicon for understanding evolution, including why there is more radical divergence of form in early evolution and less later on. The principles of emergence bear directly on such diverse topics as ontogeny, economics, the formation of galaxies, coevolution of related species, etc... "At Home in the Universe" is Kauffman's synthesis - his attempt to tie up his decades of work in an explanatory way for the layman. The book is full of intricate diagrams illustrating the concepts discussed and, while sometimes challenging, is readable by any moderately educated person. These ideas have the power to change people's world views - and certainly have transformed my own. Stuart Kauffman's ideas have resonated deeply for me and have inspired me in a multitude of ways.
So, what's the problem? It's the writing. Kauffman can't seem to decide if he is writing a book of philosophy or a book of science. He spends an inordinate amount of space discussing the philosophical implications of his ideas, often before he has even presented the ideas - let alone the experimental or theoretical support. As a book of exposition of science, "At Home in the Universe" is almost inexcusably poor. He presents a complex idea accompanied by a complex diagram which he explains. Often, however, he fails to explain the nature of the experiment or research that generated the diagram. He doesn't describe experimental or theoretical support for these ideas. The paucity of descriptions of the science behind these powerful ideas is doubly galling in the presence of repetitive presentation of inappropriate philosophical analysis. Many times in the course of this book I had to throw up my hands in frustration, wishing for exposition of the experiments hinted at in the diagrams - and being given long range cultural and religious context in its stead. For God's sake, let me put the context together for myself! But please give me the evidence.
In conclusion, this book ultimately teases. If you have any interest in emergence or complexity theory you will need to read this - the ideas are that profound. However, having read it, you will have to look elsewhere for empirical or theoretical support for the powerful ideas presented here.
 A Heavy-Laden Plodder with Unnecessary Anti-Religious Rhetoric June 22, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
When you are the inspiration for a Jurassic Park character (or at least I think he was), then you immediately capture my attention. I'll buy your book, even if its subject matter is generally outside my interests.
Stuart Kauffman seems to have been at least partially the inspiration for the interesting chaotician character "Ian Malcolm" in Jurassic Park, and I thought his real life ideas would be as interesting as his fictional incarnation's ranting on chaos theory.
Not quite. At Home in the Universe *sounds* a lot more interesting than it *was*. It's plodding and jargon-heavy. Reading it felt like a burden, and I didn't come away feeling more informed or that I had encountered something thought-provoking.
Kauffman also frequently inserts random drivel about nature being sacred despite the falsehood of religion. Not only is that absurd on its face (sacred is *defined as* "set aside for religious veneration"), but what the hell does it have to do with his ideas about complexity and emerging order?
It strikes me as extremely disrespectful to mount attacks on your readers' religious beliefs, or narcissistic to assume that they would be the same as yours. We'd expect that kind of think from The God Delusion or God is Not Great, but atheist vitriol is way off topic here.
I see this as a worrisome, almost cancerous trend in the scientific community of the past 15 years or so, where the equations atheism=science and science=atheism actually sounds sensible to large swaths of people, who somehow can no longer distinguish between philosophical and methodological naturalism.
It seems to be the flip side of the gradual degeneration of Christianity into a right wing political movement. Now millions of Americans see no difference between "likes Jesus" and "votes Republican." I don't know what these changes mean, but I do think the implications are wholly negative and its sad that Kauffman's books has to reflect so obviously on the state of affairs.
 Chaos is every where October 12, 2007
Actually the books is an outcome of scientific experiments in a computer lab. Differently from other reviewers, I want to notice that the facts of chaos exist in every where such as in Nature or in A Company.
Writer shows that everything in the world can be reduced to a series of chemical reactions. Chemical reactions can generate a complex system such as life from dead. He argues also the equilibrium of life and dead from the view of the number of kinds of molecules and the number of kinds of outcome from these molecules create or which are already in the system.
He also like many chaos theorist says that small changes in the system make big changes in the whole. (Explaining evalution). By some evidents and using probability, he shows that life on earth is the expected.
The books most important view is explaning everything as chemical reactions. And I believe this is the right thing...At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
At home in the universe, A New Proposal... April 5, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
In this book, Stuart Koaffman opens new doors to us. Through the theory of the chaos, proportions fractals and their networks boulinas, give an interesting speculation us on the origin of the life, the complex systems and the societies. It is hour to be on the awares and to try to focus to us in new horizons. This book took to him of the hand by these new horizons. It is hour to know our house in the universe...
Proposals to Unanswered Questions September 15, 2006
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
Stuart Kaufman's At Home in the Universe is a lay redaction his scientific hypotheses from his Origins of Order, a rich, fascinating, sophisticated, and complementary set of hypotheses added to Darwin's theories of evolution. For the moment, at least, they are the promising fruit of speculative or theoretical biological hypotheses (with physics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, mathematics, game theory, and economics thrown in), but they go a long way to filling in many of the gaps that strict Darwinists seem content to ignore. And some of his hypotheses, he readily admits, are heretical.
One of the obvious problems, if not primary one, that Kaufman sets to answer, Is how can natural selection work, culling the fittest to survive, without something to act on? In other words, natural selection operates on the already existent (i.e., regressive engineering), not in the formation of the entity itself. Another problem is that 4 billion years, long as that is, is still not sufficient time for natural selection to have acted through a totally random, step-by-step process in determining today's survivors. Even 100 billion years would not be enough. Another problem is how could so many species have come into existence and failed to survive (99.9%), leaving a mere 100 million for the present, in the span of a mere 4 billion years (mathematically impossible on Darwin's theories alone).
The central theme of Kaufman's work is Self-organized Criticality, a scientific twist on the notion of irreducible complexity (from the Discovery Institute's lexicon, no less), where a minimal degree of inherent complexity in a subcritical-supercritical phase transition is what spontaneously orders the animate world and generates and sustains life in accord with other, as yet, unknown, but implicit laws. From the moment that a sufficiently critical diversity of molecules reached the ideal phase transition, life itself was "spontaneously generated" as inevitable, not by accident. Once life appeared, the acts of natural selection, adaptation, coevolution, evolution of coevolution, cellular, morphological, and physiological differentiation, ontogeny, niches, populations, stable cum-chaotic dynamics, etc., could operate, but in addition to forces beyond natural selection. And while speculative, apparently many scientists share Kaufman's intuitions, inferences, and insights.
But the "other" force or forces is not mystical, much less divine, even if they may be truly awesome. Rather, it is in the nature of the universe, and more particularly in our evolving earth, that these implicit laws work in tandem with Darwin's laws. At this point, these laws are posited from the empirical knowledge we do have, but have not yet demonstrated in the scientific manner to make them even hypotheses. But Kaufman's speculative biology is not a whimsical or arbitrary metaphysics, but logical inferences based on laws and facts already in place. Having done the easy work (thinking the notions of what these other general laws of nature must be like), now science must work in earnest to confirm or reject his speculative hypotheses.
The key word and concept throughout this humorous, heady, and exacting exposition is "complexity" and within the manifold complexities of lives, environments, and mutually intersecting dynamics is a spontaneous order that arises "for free" that in turn sustains stable and steady systems just at the subcritical-supercrticial phase transition (e.g., horizon, or "edge of chaos"). Another key word and concept is "dynamic." Steady-state and homeostasis are often thought of as a static plateau, but that is mistaken, as such states are actually in a fluctuating dynamic at the phase transition between equilibrium (death) and disequilibrium (disorder). Indeed, on many different levels, living organisms are born, dwell, and die precisely at this phase transition between the subcritical (stasis, moribund) and supercritical (chaotic, disordered) states. And the key thesis is that order ("for free") is embedded in the delicate balancing act precisely at this phase transition.
Kaufman extrapolates some of these implicit biological laws and applies them to human cultural and technological advancement. The "fit" is remarkably uncanny, helping us to understand some of the dynamics of technological improvements (and diminishing returns), innovation, extinction, and spontaneity of the economy. Perhaps the most salient features are the concepts of "dynamic" and "spontaneous."
Moreover, if an analogy can be drawn from the biosphere and ecology to the social and political realms, the overwhelming preponderance of biological evidence screams complexity, diversity, and interdependence of organisms and their environments, which arise spontaneously and reciprocally to each other, in a constant dynamic that is vibrant, active, and always on the threshold of "chaos," but retains some stability through change. It is only those social and political forms that are "adaptive" that are socially and politically the "fittest," and democracy and market economies are obviously the most adaptive mechanisms to adapt to changing human needs.
Frederick Hayek addressed himself to these very issues over 50 years ago, and called the market economy and democracies "spontaneous" associations, in contradistinction to "planned" economies and governments. The former "adapt" to changing environments and circumstances, while the latter lack flexibility, and thus do not easily yield to adaptive mechanisms. "Planned" economies attempt to calculate rationally human desires, motivations, and needs in either an abstract or a priori fashion, then calculate the mode of production, the degree, and whether to accommodate, as if some "Absolute Human Mind" could anticipate all contingencies and changes by a simple mathematical formula. The problem is that bureaucrats are notoriously theory-laden and too calculating to include, much less advance, diversity (think Medicare Part D for "planned" absurdity). In practice, socialisms impede innovation and stifle ingenuity. With no means of adaptation, there is no "fittest," much less any mechanism to adapt to the actual dynamics of the world.
Communism's planned economy is an extreme case of an irrational calculus asserting what the government will allow, applying the lowest-common denominator as a criterion of sufficiency. We all know of the U.S.S.R.'s food lines, limited products, forced housing, inferior merchandise, and minimal labor investment. But even weaker forms of the rational calculus, such as socialism, does not do much better. At least their democracies allow policies to change, even if it becomes years for government to adapt to the new exigencies. Even the most socialized societies have "capitalist" outlets, to provide some barometer of social wants and meeting them. Social insurance makes sense on many fronts, but social or state "planning" of economics has rotted state and worker. Kaufman's biological analogies explain why.
Postscript: Kaufman's book is a provocative, challenging, and fascinating (sometime heady) read. Even if all of his hypotheses in the abstract are found to be untrue, at least he captures the reader's imagination, and asks the questions that most of us non-dogmatic Darwinians have raised for some time. In a time when the "easy" and "orthodox" are all too convenient for slipping under the rug, Kaufman's questions (and suggested answers) go the the very nexus of the difficulties. His suggested answers are at once perhaps too simple, on the other hand, perhaps too complex. What is refreshing, above all, is that he's not afraid to ask, and even less fearful of suggesting solutions. Thank gawd for the Sante Fe Institute, where brave and curious minds still ask questions.
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