Product Description

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. Breaking free from the constraints of reductionist reasoning, which maintains that simple, empirical mechanisms are the basis of all life, the renowned biophysicist tackles a remarkable range of subjects that will stimulate similarly far-reaching audiences. 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. The book opens with an exploration of the interaction between biology and physics, unpacking Schrodinger's famous text "What Is Life?" and revealing the shortcomings of the notion that artificial "intelligence" can truly replicate life.Rosen also challenges the paradox of the brain as organism and the receptacle of scientific reasoning. Elegantly rounding out his argument, the author reflects on the quandary of side effects, moments when science confronts unpredicted outgrowths of a process thought to be reduced to a system. An intriguing enigma links all of the essays: How can science explain the unpredictable? As a century defined by extraordinary scientific progress draws to a close, "Essays on Life Itself" is a critical work that asks readers to reconsider what we have learned and where science can lead us in the years to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #767755 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
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

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.

Customer Reviews

biology is bigger than physics - as schrodinger said
Back in the 1940s, Erwin Schrodinger - the quantum physics guy - wrote a noted book, What Is Life?, which argued that the life sciences are somehow bigger than the physical sciences. Life and mind express more of nature's potential. Or to put it the other way round, reductionism must always miss much of what actually exists.

Robert Rosen's Essays aims to show just what Schrodinger was talking about. A professor of biophysics at Dalhousie, who died in 1998, Rosen tried to create a pure maths of living systems - to distil what it means to be alive and aware into the most general set of principles. This was an interesting enough project - and the subject of previous books such as Anticipatory Systems (1985) and Life Itself (1991). But in his final book he mounts a general and splendidly vitriolic attack on the many conceits of Western reductionist thinking.

Rosen is particularly good on the question of what is epistemology (he attempts a mathematically-general description of what it is to be a cognitive system) and thus what are the shortcomings of any formalised epistemological method (exactly why the mechanical causal models of standard Western science must encounter Godel-like limits).

Who should the book appeal to? It is really for the serious scholar who is looking for concrete reasons why Newton, Turing, Boltzmann and a host of modern champions of reductionism, such as Dawkins, Dennett, Monod, Crick, etc, face some fundamental epistemological limits. It is not an anti-science tract or a post-modern critique. It is utterly unmystical and has nothing to offer new-agers. Instead it is a proper challenge from within science to the mechanical view - to the atomism and computationalism that pervades most people's causal image of Reality.

Are there criticisms? Being a collection of essays, it gives the feeling of a succession of disconnected barbs rather than a cohesive thesis. It is hard to see how the parts make a whole argument unless you are already halfway to where Rosen wants to go. He also overplays the organic and the dynamic at the expense of the mechanical. There is a very special kind of causal power inherent in the mechanical - witness the role played by genes, words and neural networks in forming living and conscious systems. He risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

However, as with Schrodinger, it is the vigour of Rosen's attack on simple-minded reductionism that is half its charm. If you are already switched on to the works of CS Peirce, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Maturana and Varela, Ilya Prigogine, Howard Pattee, Stanley Salthe, or the popular science writings of Fritjof Capra, then this is a crucial addition to the bookshelf.