At home in the universe
by Stuart A. Kauffman · first published 1995
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Argues that life is likely to emerge under favorable conditions, using boolean network models and ideas about self-organization and complexity. It is clear and insightful for readers curious about life.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A major scientific revolution has begun, a new paradigm that rivals Darwin's theory in importance. At its heart is the discovery of the order that lies deep within the most complex of systems, from the origin of life, to the workings of giant corporations, to the rise and fall of great civilizations. And more than anyone else, this revolution is the work of one man, Stuart Kauffman, a MacArthur Fellow and visionary pioneer of the new science of complexity. Now, in At Home in the Universe, Kauffman brilliantly weaves together the excitement of intellectual discovery and a fertile mix of insigh
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on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗What about Eric Chaisson's Cosmic Evolution, Goodwin's Signs of Life, Shrodinger's What is Life?, Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe? All of these books I've read which argue the same damn thing as this guy, so what's new? That last book by Kauffman is probably the most simialr, and I highly recommend it to those interested.
on “A New Physics Theory of Life” ↗There's a fascinating book by Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, where he claims that under certain conditions (that are favorable in our universe), life is all but certain (he views it as a fourth law of thermodynamics). He uses a computational model called boolean…
on “Does Science Suggest Humans Have a Cosmic Role?” ↗…book, clear, succinct and insightful. Part of the canon on our understanding of what life is / what it means to be animate instead of inanimate. Other books on the intangible quality of being alive: - At Home in the Universe by Stuart Kauffman - The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander - Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
on “What Is Life? (1944) [pdf]” ↗Interesting read around that question: Stuart Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity
on “Algorithm discovers how six molecules could evolve into life’s building blocks” ↗An argument for life being expected is made pretty well in the book "At Home in the Universe" by Stuart Kaufman (spelling?). We the expected.
on “The timing of evolutionary transitions suggests intelligent life is rare” ↗See Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, for a discussion in depth. It's a property of all life. I think of it as a zone between inanimate and immolated. We need energy flow to live, but too much kills.
on “Margaret Mead, Technocracy, and the origins of AI's ideological divide” ↗…when he was young and before he reached international fame for his ideas in architecture and philosophy. I recommend reading Chapter 8, “Dialectic by Lake Michigan”, from the book *Buckminster Fuller: At Home in the Universe* to understand the reasoning he himself developed that night that led him to choose life and thus become the global celebrity the world knows him as. Because of the good fight the Internet Archive is…
on “Ask HN: Trauma has broken me. Nothing has worked. Alternatives to suicide?” ↗I was fascinated by "At Home In The Universe" back in the 90s. But this seems like a rehashing of the same ideas, without new evidence or theory. Anything new here?
on “Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?” ↗Reading the introductory paragraph to the paper, it sounds like a rehash of Kaufmann's (very good) book "At Home in the Universe", which at this point is almost 30 years old. Not sure what this paper adds, but will read it to find out. The thesis of Kaufmann's book is that the emergence of life, given supporting conditions (variety…
on “Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?” ↗…reproduction. And thinking about how the first cell came to be also isn't new - it's not as if those two scientists from the article are the first to think about that problem. For example I have read "At Home In The Universe" by Stuart Kauffman 13 years ago, which suggests how networks of chemical reactions could evolve (not saying that is how it happened, but it is a possibility to consider). I guess they just had to make…
on “ Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution ” ↗…systems. There was also some interesting work on “Artificial Life” although that research program seems to have fallen out of favor. My introduction in 1995 was the book Chaos and then Stuart Kauffman’s At Home in the Universe. Wolframs New Kind of Science was also interesting.
on “General Theory of Neural Networks” ↗…programs, reliant on their sequential structure, might be regarded as a parallel to nucleic acid sequences in the emergence of early life, but the random origins are also comparable to Stuart Kauffman's "At home in the universe" proto-metabolism where varied individual chemical reactions combine to create a whole capable of collective self-replication.
on “Artificial-life: A simple (300 lines of code) reproduction of Computational Life” ↗