This description of how “life is the natural expression of complex matter” meant a lot to me. \u00a0In fact the whole idea of chaos as something that can be expressed mathematically greatly expanded my appreciation and understanding of the universe. \u00a0When I was studying astronomy and physics, I felt frustrated by the fact that we could describe so little of the universe in mathematics. \u00a0Back in the 60’s, if you wanted to model living systems mathematically, you had to make so many simplifying assumptions that the equation you might come up with is trivial. \u00a0The image of chaos, of patterns repeating themselves but never exactly, feels so right. \u00a0Just watch the river flow: there’s a standing wave upstream of a boulder, and it keeps changing, never the same, but it also never gets very far away from a basic wave form. \u00a0In chaos mathematics, there’s a thing called a “strange attractor.” \u00a0This is the boundary that the continuously evolving pattern never gets away from entirely.<\/p>\n
There are also what are called “emergent phenomena.” \u00a0This is when a collection of diverse simple items self-organize into a higher level object. \u00a0For example: water, air, and heat can interact in such a way that they produce a huge storm called a “hurricane.”<\/p>\n
From these ideas, and from the amazing stars I see in the night sky, and what I know about the creation of stars and galaxies, gives me a very strong sense of the Spirit that created\/became the universe. \u00a0See my earlier post<\/a> for more about this.<\/p>\n I love this quote from Stuart Kauffman<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI have partial answers to what it all means,\u201d says Stuart Kauffman …\u00a0 \u201cFor example, suppose that these models about the origin of life are correct.\u00a0 Then life doesn\u2019t hang in the balance.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t depend on whether some warm little pond just happens to produce template-replicating molecules like DNA or RNA.\u00a0 Life is the natural expression of complex matter.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very deep property of chemistry and catalysis and being far from equilibrium.\u00a0 And that means that we\u2019re at home in the universe.\u00a0 We\u2019re to be expected. How welcoming that is!\u00a0 How far that is from the image of organisms as tinkered-together contraptions where everything is bits of widgetry piled on top of bits of ad hocery, and it\u2019s all blind chance.\u00a0 In that world there are no deep principles in biology, other than random variation and natural selection; we\u2019re not at home in the universe in the same way.<\/p>\n \u201cNext,\u201d says Kauffman, \u201csuppose that you come back many years later, after the autocatalytic sets have been coevolving with one another and squirting strings at one another.\u00a0 The things that would still be around would be those things that have come to evolve competitive interactions, food webs, mutualism, symbiosis.\u00a0 The things that you would see would be those that made the world they now mutually live in.\u00a0 And that reminds us that we make the world we live in with one another.\u00a0 We\u2019re participants in the story as it unfolds.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t victims and we aren\u2019t outsiders.\u00a0 We are part of the universe, you and me, and the goldfish.\u00a0 We make our world with one another.\u201d \u00a0 \u00a0 p321<\/p>\n This quote is from the book\u00a0Complexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop<\/a><\/p>\n Stuart Kauffman has more books! \u00a0 \u00a0At Home in the Universe<\/a> This description of how “life is the natural expression of complex matter” meant a lot to me. \u00a0In fact the whole idea of chaos as something that can be expressed mathematically greatly expanded my appreciation and understanding of the universe. … Continue reading
\n<\/a>The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution<\/a>
\nReinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion<\/a><\/p>\n<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"