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Title: The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex by Harold J. Morowitz ISBN: 0-19-513513-X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: On Harold J. Morowitz's book "The Emergence of Everything"
Comment: Motowitz's monumental book outlines 28 examples of said emergence, ranging from the making of our nonuniform universe, the emergence of stars and the elements of the periodic table, the solar system, planetary structures, universal metabolism, prokaryotic life, eukaryotic life, multicellular organisms, animals, humans, mind, philosophy and spirituality.
At each level of emergence there may be agents that interact with their neighbors, not necessarily Darwinian interaction but some kind of interaction. Agents that find themselves to be successful are then latter discovered to be necessary for latter steps in the emergence, and their success is found as agents comply to what Morowitz calls a "pruning rule". The Darwinian selection principle, permitting agents to leave the most offspring as they are found to be fittest from natural selection, is such a pruning rule. The Pauli exclusion rule is a second example that Morowitz gives. The exclusion principle restricts the electron cloud that surrounds the natural elements (in our periodic table) in such a way that chemistry and bonding properties emerge from quantum mechanics; properties that are discovered to be necessary for life as we know it.
On page 101 Morowitz writes:
"...in our discussion of the Pauli exclusion principle we dealt with the restriction that no two electrons in a structure can share the same four quantum numbers - presumably four quantum numbers because of the four dimensions in formulating the Schrödinger equation using relativistic quantum mechanics. This principle does not come from dynamics of the problem, but from the symmetry requirements on the solutions.... Because of the non-dynamical feature, several physicists and philosophers of science detect a kind of noetic feature deep in physics"
Morowitz points to this noetic quality in several places. Continuing on pages 101 to 102 he writes on the first recognized example of life-based behavior found in prokaryotes:
".... Somewhere in bacterial evolution, motility appeared. The operative structures are flagella, which rotate, propel the cells. A number of cases were discovered in which cells in a gradient of nutrients swim toward higher concentrations, and in a gradient of toxins swim toward lower concentration. The mechanism is somewhat indirect. Periodically the swimming cells randomly switch directions. In a favorable gradient they change less frequently, and in an unfavorable gradient they change more frequently. They are letting their profits run and cutting their losses. For a population of cells, this leads to a fit behavioral repertoire. The behavior looks causal, but the endpoint looks teleological. It requires sensing the environment, concentration versus time, and responding to the time gradient, which is also a space gradient, since the organisms are swimming. I think it is important to look at these hints of cognitive behavior as they appear."
Regarding the mental or noetic aspect of all animal life, on page 138 Morowitz writes:
"... There is currently a reexamination that argues that mental activity is universally distributed through the animal kingdom and perhaps in other taxa down to the unicellular eukaryotes. Psychologist Donald R. Griffen has gathered a great deal of evidence in the book Animal Minds and argues for the universality of cognition.... I see the grand dawn of the emergence of reflective thought."
Morowitz describes the Principle of Competitive Exclusion (previously studied by Alfred Lotka, Vito Volterra, and Charles Elton), as a pruning rule that implies "... the impossibility of two species occupying the same niche in a steady-state ecosystem". For Morowitz this principle stems from Darwinian selection, but it has unsavory consequences as it affect social aspects of humanization. He writes of the principle that "... humans, having reflective thought and the power of choice, are not bound to living out a set of mathematical relations". In chapter 26, Morowitz gives accounts on how the Principle of Competitive Exclusion can be studied and used as a tool to avoid the unsavory qualities of ourselves (including prejudices and examples of genocide) that emerge from the principle when we unknowingly back into it.
Morowitz did not notice that the Principle of Competitive Exclusion has a shadow principle, that I will name the Principle of Cooperative Inclusion. Nevertheless, this shadow principle has a noetic quality that Morowitz has grown fond of. It is such a teleological principle that says that hate will destroy itself when it is forced to coexist with the inclusion brought by love. And so my friends we hold onto the angry tension, not by competitive exclusion but by cooperative inclusion. A better world will unfold as hate ranges war with its own angry shadow; the catharsis will expunge our prejudices.
Morowitz has many kind words for Teilhard de Chardin. On page 175 he writes: "... I see the World Wide Web as a reification of instantiation of the noosphere and consider Teilhard as an even more prescient thinker. Human thought is collective."
Rating: 5
Summary: Not light, but definitely worth reading!
Comment: This is a relatively small book with a huge message. It deals with complex, sophisticated theories - some explained clearly; others such as the emergence of metabolism, not so clearly despite Dr. Morowitz's efforts. It is written at a scholarly level - at least at the undergraduate level - as evidenced, for example, by his syntax and the technical lexicon he employs, often without definition.
Dr. Morowitz's premise is that at the dawn of the 21st century "we now see the world through the fresh perspective and understanding of the computer revolution and the study of complex systems...[and] this new mode of thinking has begun to develop an exciting explanatory concept designated emergence, which develops previously unrealized ways of deepening our understanding of the past eons and illuminates how the universe, after a long and complex 12-billion-year trajectory from the Big Bang, has given rise to the human mind and modern man" (pg. 16). Classical science is based on reductionism and theory formation that work their way back up to the world of observation. I disagree from the review from Scientific American that emergence is the opposite of reductionism; rather, emergence supplements and complements reductionism, taking it to a new level. It essentially is the realization - the study - that the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts (pg. 23); that is, the system or process that emerges is something more than would have been expected by the study of the constituent parts.
Dr. Morowitz selected 28 examples of "observed instances that have emergence in common but vary over an enormous range...selected to form an almost linear chronological sequence from the beginning of the universe we now occupy toward a conscious grasping for the future, a search for spirit, or something in that domain" (pg. 25) - in other words, a grand tour from the beginning of our universe towards what our species is to become. This is a heady undertaking, to be sure, and Dr. Morowitz is up to the task.
He first steps through the 28 examples ever so briefly in order to provide an advance summary. He then takes us through them in more detail with a chapter devoted to each. Some are straightforward and easy to grasp, such as numbers 3/the emergence of stars and 4/the periodic table; but others are complex and abstruse, such as numbers 10/cells with organelles and 11/multicellularity. He provides plenty of supplemental reading along the way with suggestions at the end of each chapter.
What we see from his 28 groupings is that existence, as we know it, stretching from the Big Bang into the future as far as our minds can visualize, has been and continues to be one continuous emergence - what one might call a mega-emergence. We can segment it however we like (he segments it 28 ways), but it doesn't change the fact that from the Big Bang there is no known way to predict what has come to be and what is yet to come.
While some of the concepts are difficult to grasp, Dr. Morowitz is still a delight to read. He uses language wonderfully - precise, concise, and descriptive. Take for example, "Toward the end of the accretion period, the Earth was still occasionally subject to large meteoritic impacts that boiled away the oceans into cloud layers that subsequently precipitated" (pg. 70), or "Among the reptiles of the Pennsylvania Age of the upper Paleozoic, courtship ritual and sexual selection emerged...[which] was the beginning of a type of behavior that culminated in the dramas of Shakespeare" (pg. 125). Cool.
He weaves a great thread about the development of animals through numbers 13/animalness, 14/chordateness, 15/vertebrates, 16/crossing the geospheres - from fish to amphibians, and 17/reptiles. ("Geospheres"? That's number 10.) After he discusses the emergence of 18/mammals, but before he moves on to 19/higher mammals he sets the stage by discussing the definition of species and the concepts of niches and the principle of competitive exclusion. He applies the latter to human social behavior as one basis for cultural and ethnic friction, but with a twist. "In a battle between hominid species, the victors kill the vanquished. In battles between hominid races, the victors breed with the vanquished. The difference is a flow of genes between the groups." (pg. 153.) From there he finishes with 23/toolmaking, 24/language, 25/agriculture, 26/technology and urbanization, 27/philosophy, and 28/the spirit.
Where does he see this thread taking humanity? "Two new futuristic views have developed in recent years. The first of these argues that carbon-based life will be the precursor of silicon-based life that, because of potentially superior intelligence, will ultimately take over, with humans either eliminated or in a secondary role. [Perhaps this is where the concept for the Wachowskis' The Matrix originated?] ...The second futuristic view is a world in which genetic engineering is used for us to become the race of hominids we want to be." (pg. 177.) Dr. Morowitz opts for the latter. "I assume that something new will emerge in human society, and it will present us with undreamed possibilities in science and the arts...There will be a new emergence, and we will play a part in what that emergence is. That is our destiny." (pg. 178.)
Dr. Morowitz has an amazing tale. It's difficult to follow many of the details, but overall it is upbeat and optimistic. Time will tell. In the meantime, this is an excellent read if you want to start towards an understanding of the cutting edge of science, where it blends with religion and philosophy.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Reply to Scientific Atheism
Comment: Morowitz the scientist makes a single point, which he drives home again, and again, ceaseless, incessantly, until finally it begins to sink in. It is, in this respect, perhaps the intellectual equivalent of Ravel's Bolero, or the yogi's infinitely repeated "Om". The point is that reductivism is the only tool we have for analyzing the world, it is an amazingly powerful tool, and yet at every level of complexity, emergent phenomena arise that could not have been predicted by the levels that preceded them, and can barely, if at all, be modeled an understood using reductivist analytical and experimental techiques.
This is a message that will be rejected by one particular group: the self-styled "scientific atheists" who claim that scientific methodology ineluctably implies that God does not exist, or at least that there is no more reason to believe in God than it is to believe in the Tooth Fairy. Morowitz, by contrast, follows Spinoza in identifying the world of science as dealing with the product of the "immanent God" whose transcendance we attempt to capture spiritually.
Scientific atheism's error is its inability to appreciate the notion of emergence. Just as consciousness emerges from a material and chemical substrate the scinetific understanding of which tell us virtually nothing about the nature of its emergent properties, so the physical universe may give rise to an emergent spirituality that simply escapes the scientific imagination. Morovitz' interesting book makes this point extremely clearly.
I believe Amazon is due major kudos for providing a forum in which readers can compare and contrast their ideas. I really enjoyed the previous nine reviews of this provocative book.
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Title: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz ISBN: 0786868449 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 05 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo Barbasi ISBN: 0452284392 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts ISBN: 0393041425 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks by Mark Buchanan ISBN: 0393041530 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson ISBN: 0684868768 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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