Essays on Life Itself

by Robert Rosen

Overview

Compiling twenty articles on the nature of life and on the objective of the natural sciences, this remarkable book complements Robert Rosen's groundbreaking Life Itself—a work that influenced a wide range of philosophers, biologists, linguists, and social scientists. In Essays on Life Itself, Rosen takes to task the central objective of the natural sciences, calling into question the attempt to create objectivity in a subjective world and forcing us to reconsider where science can lead us in the years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231105101
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/23/1999
Series:	Complexity in Ecological Systems
Edition description:	400, ed.
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	0.00(w) x 0.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Rosen was professor emeritus of biophysics at Dalhousie University and the author of books including Life Itself (Columbia 1991), Principles of Mathematical Biology, and Principles of Measurement.

Table of Contents

Preface
Part I : On Biology and Physics
1. The Schrödinger Question, What Is Life? Fifty-Five Years Later
2. Biological Challenges to Contemporary Paradigms of Physics and Mimetics
3. What Is Biology?
Part II : On Biology and the Mind
4. The Church-Pythagoras Thesis
5. Drawing the Boundary Between Subject and Object: Comments on the Mind-Brain Problem
6. Mind as Phenotype
7. On Psychomimesis
8. The Mind-Brain Problem and the Physics of Reductionism
Part III : On Genericity
9. Genericity as Information
10. Syntactics and Semantics in Languages
11. How Universal Is a Universal Unfolding?
12. System Closure and Dynamical Degeneracy
13. Some Random Thoughts About Chaos and Some Chaotic Thoughts About Randomness
Part IV: Similarity and Dissimilarity in Biology
14. Optimality in Biology and Medicine
15. Morphogenesis in Networks
16. Order and Disorder in Biological Control Systems
17. What Does It Take to Make an Organism?
Part V: On Biology and Technology
18. Some Lessons of Biology
19. Bionics Revisited
20. On the Philosophy of Craft
21. Cooperation and Chimera
22. Are Our Modeling Paradigms Nongeneric?
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

These 22 essays are intended for serious thinkers, as they are provocative and often iconoclastic. There are many new ideas, daring perspectives, and challenging modes of interpretation of concepts that readers may have mistakenly thought they understood.... I am equally sure that readers will enjoy and benefit from these essays.

— Bruce J. West

The Quarterly Review of Biology

Contains a collection of philosopher and biologist Robert Rosen's post- essays, written for meetings, seminars, conferences, and workshops and, in some cases, previously published. Essays are divided into five sections: on biology and physics; on biology and the mind; on genericity; similarity and dissimilarity in biology; and on biology and technology. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

These 22 essays are intended for serious thinkers, as they are provocative and often iconoclastic. There are many new ideas, daring perspectives, and challenging modes of interpretation of concepts that readers may have mistakenly thought they understood.... I am equally sure that readers will enjoy and benefit from these essays.

The Quarterly Review of Biology - Bruce J. West