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Why are living things alive? As a theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen saw this as the most fundamental of all questions-and yet it had never been answered satisfactorily by science. The answers to this question would allow humanity to make an enormous leap forward in our understanding of the principles at work in our world.
For centuries, it was believed that the only scientific approach to the question "What is life?" must proceed from the Cartesian metaphor (organism as machine). Classical approaches in science, which also borrow heavily from Newtonian mechanics, are based on a process called "reductionism." The thinking was that we can better learn about an intricate, complicated system (like an organism) if we take it apart, study the components, and then reconstruct the system-thereby gaining an understanding of the whole.
However, Rosen argues that reductionism does not work in biology and ignores the complexity of organisms. Life Itself, a landmark work, represents the scientific and intellectual journey that led Rosen to question reductionism and develop new scientific approaches to understanding the nature of life. Ultimately, Rosen proposes an answer to the original question about the causal basis of life in organisms. He asserts that renouncing the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm does not mean abandoning science. Instead, Rosen offers an alternate paradigm for science that takes into account the relational impacts of organization in natural systems and is based on organized matter rather than on particulate matter alone.
Central to Rosen's work is the idea of a "complex system," defined as any system that cannot be fully understood by reducing it to its parts. In this sense, complexity refers to the causal impact of organization on the system as a whole. Since both the atom and the organism can be seen to fit that description, Rosen asserts that complex organization is a general feature not just of the biosphere on Earth-but of the universe itself.
- Sales Rank: #1116417 in Books
- Published on: 2005-07-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.96" h x .64" w x 6.30" l, .97 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 285 pages
Review
"Drawing on the languages of organizational theory, cybernetics, and category theory, Rosen questions the classic machine metaphor of life.... Once formulated, Rosen uses his concept of life to revisit relational biology, molecular biology, evolution, and chemical sequences." -- "Choice"
Review
Dr. Rosen presents a most fascinating book.... Followers of Rosen's work will find Life Itself to be new and exciting, as I did.
(David W. Roberts, Utah State University)
Iconoclastic and occasionally brilliant...Life Itself is well written, fascinating...
(Steve Pacala, University of Connecticut, Storrs)
About the Author
Dr. Robert Rosen (1934-1998) was a prominent theorist in the areas of biology and biophysics and taught and conducted research at various universities for over three decades. He was the author of thirteen books, including Anticipatory Systems; Fundamentals of Measurement and Representation of Natural Systems; Rosennean Complexity; and The Limits of the Limits of Science.
Most helpful customer reviews
35 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ IN YEARS
By Alwyn Scott
Although many influential scientists (Steven Weinberg, Francis Crick, and Richard Dawkins, for example) claim - and most members of general public believe - that all of reality can "in principle" can be expressed as the dynamics of its constitutive elements (atoms, genes, neurons), some have intuitively felt that this reductive tenet is wrong, that life and the human mind are more complex phenomena. Critics of reductionism have pointed to Kurt Goedel's 1931 "incompleteness theorem" (which shows that in any axiomatic formulation of, say, number theory there will be true theorems that cannot be established) as a contrary example, but this paradigm-shattering result has been largely ignored the scientific community, which has blithely persisted in its reductive beliefs.
How is one to understand this curious situation? In Kuhnian terms, it seems that reductionism persists because this old paradigm has not yet fallen out of favor. Leaders in physics have not yet taken the public stance required by Goedel's theorem and assertions in their textbooks have not changed. Why not? Perhaps because Goedel's theorem relates to mathematics rather than reality, or perhaps because recognizing its import diminishes the status of physics as the primary science.
With the publication of Robert Rosen's LIFE ITSELF, the other shoe has dropped. In a carefully constructed exposition developed over eleven reader-friendly chapters, Rosen shows how something akin to Goedel's theorem applies to the natural world, and in particular to biology. Thus Rosen shows that all dynamical systems can be divided into two broad classes: "simple systems" for which the reductive paradigm holds and "complex systems" for which it does not hold. Note, however, that by the term "complex system" Rosen means something more specific than the way that the same term is used in chaos theory. Low-dimensional dynamical systems that exhibit chaos are "simple" to Rosen, whereas the term "complex" is reserved for those systems that cannot be simulated. Thus a Turing machine is "simple" as is the weather system proposed by Edward Lorenz as a model weather system that exhibits "irregular" (i.e., chaotic) solutions and the well-known "butterfly effect." "Complex systems" - Rosen proves in the sense that mathematicians use the term "prove" - comprise natural systems that cannot be simulated.
As a physicalist whose intuition has long suggested that reductive perspectives are too narrow to encompass living organisms and human consciousness (see my STAIRWAY TO THE MIND), the discovery of this book has been an illuminating experience for me. Having just read it word for word over three increasingly exciting days, I strongly recommend LIFE ITSELF to all who would understand the limits of science as it is currently practiced and preview the ways that linguistics, biology, cognitive science, and the social sciences (psychology and cultural anthropology) can be expected to develop in the present century.
Alwyn Scott
[...]
39 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
A Revolution in Science
By David Keirsey
Robert Rosen asks the question: what is life?, and answers the question precisely after 10 chapters. His method of answering the question is ground breaking. In trying to answer the question of, What is Life? he first must explore what life is not. In that process of trying to answer the question about life, he had discovered something *very* important about science and mathematics: there are some unnecessary limitations placed them, currently.
Robert Rosen *precisely* shows the reader the logical limitations of current scientific thinking in the form of modern physics and the machine metaphor. This is not your typical rant on reductionism. Everybody has hear the reframe against reductionism, "the whole is more than the sum of the parts," but Rosen shows in precise terms, much more: there is a limitation of modes of entailment (inference). The book is not easy reading, not because it is poorly written, for Rosen is a great writer, but because it examines the foundations of science, mathematics, and computer science (essentially anything having to to logical investigation). By trying to answer the question: what is life?, Robert Rosen shows us that the Newtonian paradigm (including all of modern physics, such as string theory, quantum loop gravity, and relativity) cannot and will not be sufficient to answer the important questions that not being ask in physics. Their modes of entailment are limited unnecessarily using the machine metaphor (e.g. differential equations and recursion, such as the Schrödinger's wave equation or Einstein's field equations). One of his results is to show precisely why physics (including molecular biology) has little to say about life (and non-life). He proves that Alonzo Church's thesis cannot be true, and demonstrates a revolutionary methodology (akin to precise analogy -- category theory) can help answer questions not asked by reductionistic science. Rosen examines physics, mathematics, biology, computer science with great insight and points the way to the future of science, in the use of precise mathematical metaphor; that is, by reasoning about function (as opposed to structure) by doing a primitive form of comparative complexity.
Life Itself is the best introduction into Robert Rosen's revolutionary work: any scientist not completely blinded by the machine metaphor or lacking in enough background, should be able to "get it" with some work and concentration. Don't be fooled and bogged down by the first three chapters; this is, the ground breaking book: on par with Newton's Principia and Darwin's Origin of Species. However, don't expect to get everything on the first (or tenth) reading.
A guide to the book: getting through Preface, Note to Reader, Praeludium, Chaps 1-3, Chapter 4 is crucial, this is where he sets up the problem and deconstructs Newton's technique (dynamics) and shows its weakness. Chapter 5 shows that there is another way. (Life Itself is not the standard (and vague) rant against reductionism - he shows an alternative.) In Chapters 6-9 he deconstructs simulation and the machine metaphor and shows it is equivalent to the Newton paradigm. Chapter 10 and 11 give you a good understanding why he went to so much trouble. What he doesn't say explicitly in this book, for his interest is in biology, is that his methodology is applicable to ALL of Science and mathematics, not just biology.
His Anticipatory Systems book (his previous book) is just as good, but the book Life Itself is crucial to read to understand the importance of his ideas, and is the best introduction. Unfortunately, Anticipatory Systems is out of print. Its going to take awhile for science, mathematics, and computer science to catch up. His last book, published after his death, Essays on Life Itself, is icing on the cake.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
One of the most important science books of the 20th century
By T. Gwinn
The other reviewers have already described the contents of Rosen's work sufficiently well that I will not bother to restate it all.
Instead, I want to stress that this book and his "Essays on Life Itself" are so profound and intelligently argued that anyone interested in any of the physical sciences, not just theoretical biology, will gain a great deal of insight and appreciation for the limitations of the current state of physics, upon which so much science is now based, as well as offering insights into ways of enriching physics, and the sciences in general.
The use of category theory and similar math should not deter any astute layperson, for although the math supports the arguments brilliantly, the arguments are well-described. What will be more difficult, in fact, is successfully grasping the results of the arguments in their full profundity.
This book rightfully deserves to have as widespread paradigm-shattering impact on physical science as Godel's "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems" had on mathematics.
Rosen showed that, in fact, biology is not merely a trivial subcategory of physics; but instead that biology displays physical systems that are beyond the limited scope of current physics. And that enriching physics to encompass biological systems would enhance all of physics in very profound ways.
Sadly, I can only assume that it was (and still is) the ideological view of biology as a mere curiosity of physics that has allowed so many in science to fail to read Rosen's work.
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