Rating: 
Summary: Is increasing complexity the real arrow of time?
Review: This book is bolder and more stimulating than Kauffman's seminal "Origins of Order", which is saying a great deal. And it's easier to read, which isn't saying very much. It's a nightlong fireworks display of ideas, but as you'd expect, the core idea is still that of "order for free." Kauffman argues that the second law of thermodynamics, once its formulation and its assumptions are carefully critiqued, does not imply that the universe is destined to exhibit more and more disorder. On the contrary, the central tendency of the universe is toward ever ramifying complexity. Complex systems, and living things in particular, act as so many Maxwell's Demons, identifying sources - often surprising and unpredictable sources - of exploitable energy, and harnessing them to drive work cycles for their own benefit. And for their own further complexification. The paradigmatic setting for the argument, which he then explores in a variety of other settings, is a soup of organic chemicals. The number of additional chemicals that can be synthesized in one step, Kauffman argues persuasively, grows exponentially as the number of input chemicals grows linearly. Thus there is an explosion of "the adjacent possible". The same is true of the number of potential catalytic relationships among the chemical species in the soup. Simple considerations of probability make it all but inevitable that sets of self-sustaining catalytic processes will arise spontaneously. And if so, can life itself be such a leap? His arguments are qualitative, but in a hard-edged way. The worldview - or cosmos view - that emerges is a stupefyingly optimistic one. This is fuzzy thinking with real hair on its chest. Kauffman acknowledges from the get-go that what he's putting into this volume isn't science. It's "protoscience", intuitions, educated guesses and speculations that may well turn into some spectacular science indeed. The reigning dean of complexity studies is here thinking out loud, carefully and at length, and sometimes out of even his own considerable depth, about the most fundamental questions facing biology, economics, and (perhaps) physics as the new millenium begins. He seems not to have reached a wide readership, but neither did another cross-disciplinary work of similar speculative boldness and depth, Schroedinger's "What Is Life?" Like that small gem, this will be discovered and rediscovered as a classic over the decades to come.
Rating:
Summary: Questions which shake science
Review: This is a great book. Not by the suggested answers to the problems related to the notion of Life, but by the questions which are asked. It breaks dogmas in physics which simply do not allow the comprehension of biology from a physical perspective. Kauffman notes limits of our actual physics, and proposes tentative ways of exploring.
This book is good for anyone with an inquisitive mind and a desire to explore the nature of Life.
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