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It's a complex topic. I think it really got kicked off with "What is Life?" and we've been able to build more details on it since then. There are many parts o
by jmcqk6 3y ago
It's a complex topic. I think it really got kicked off with "What is Life?" and we've been able to build more details on it since then. There are many parts of the story that we know in incredible details. Chaos theory, information theory, non-equillibrium thermodynamics, complexity and emergence, auto-catalytic chemistry are all just parts of it, and each one are massive fields of study on their own.
I'm not sure there will ever be a synthesis of all these things that creates a paradigm of some sort. There's simply too much.
- ixaxaar 3y agoI think the complexity researchers over the years have created a wide range of tooling for analysing complex systems across a large number of domains. Consider complexity economics, computational social sciences, network sciences and cascading networks, evolutionary theories, parts of systems biology, connectomics and computational neuroscience etc. The Santa Fe institute has been at the forefront and has an amazing collections of publications in their own press. David krakaeur's book "Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: The Evolving Idea of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute" is like a 20 year survey paper and an amazing read.
- photonthug 3y agoI've been on this same journey through the Santa Fe institute pubs on this topic, which all started in a weird place because I wondered what kind of bizarre scientific research outfit had cormac McCarthy on staff as an artist in residence apart from the rest of the conspicuously multidisciplinary luminaries. What a unique, strange, and special intellectual atmosphere they must have had going in their prime and hopefully the best days are ahead still. It seems hard to compare to anything else.. one thinks of bell labs but probably only the peak of the Vienna circle comes close. We need more places with artists, philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists rubbing shoulders in the halls.
- jgarzon 3y agoSanta Fe institute pubs? I’m curious to go there is it open to the public?
- tsimionescu 3y agoI believe they mean "publications".
- ixaxaar 3y agohttps://www.santafe.edu/research/sfi-press https://www.santafe.edu/research/sfi-press BTW these books were up on amazon India for like $10-$15 each (books with slight printing defects were being dumped in the 3rd world) so I lapped up the entire collection :P
- johngossman 3y agoAgree on “What is Life?” but recently learned that Leo Szilard is the first one to connect entropy and life, in a 1929 paper. https://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.18/notes/computation/Szilard-1929.pdf https://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.18/notes/computation/Szi... Szilard seems to have been involved in everything.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe? Depends on whose expectations you are trying to meet. To some it would be a major transition, to others it's just another everyday minor non-event in the very macro scheme of things. If you're going to look at it mathematically it probably makes a difference when the number of non-extreme planetary environments begins to become significant compared to the number of possible chemical reactions among the limited number of elements in nature. Only one of these numbers can reach truly astronomical proportions.