Not long before he died, I heard an interview with Charles Bowden in which he praised the work of Howard T. Odum for “changing his life” and as a result the way he thought about a vast number of subjects. However he also mentioned that Odum’s ideas were so far (beyond, above, outside of) conventional thinking that he had – according to Bowden – become something of “a pariah” to many in the Academy. Such is often the way with the truly brilliant among us – rock the intellectual boat too much and they throw you out of it.
I mention all of this as it was what crossed my mind when I opened the package that arrived last week from Oxford University Press carrying a copy of Stuart A. Kauffman’s new book Humanity in a Creative Universe. Unable to get even the first inkling of what the book was about after reading the enclosed material and jacket, I nearly put it in the “don’t bother” pile when the recollection of Bowden’s words about Odum suddenly came to mind.
Sometimes the most profound ideas don’t fit neatly into categories or give themselves over to brief summation. I’ll let you know more of what I discover in Kauffman’s new book once I finish reading it.
July 15, 2016 @ 17:17
Stuart needs a bit of editing for simplicity and repetition, but the book, bringing together themes Stuart has worked on over decades is, I believe, one of the most important of our era. He uses terms such as “prestate that state space” that will twist your eyes. All it means is that to solve any set of equations describing the dynamics of our world, you need to be able to define boundary conditions AND what CAN happen — a pool table has its boundaries and the balls can roll to any point w/in that space. With perfect knowledge of the boundaries and initial placement of the balls, you can start some moving and then write down the equations of motion and friction and tell exactly what will happen. Determinism.
But in real systems such as biological systems, there are NO boundary conditions. Consider economics: Someone invents radio communication and … 100s of millions of people are later playing PokemonGo. No equations nor laws of causality can predict this because not only can you not say what WILL happen next, you can’t even say what CAN happen next.
In general, part of the creativity of the Universe that we (and your cat) participates in is that by doing things we create new possibilities (I invent a lightweight pot, you use it as a cool drum) and the realization that possibilities, once observed, are real objects in the universe, but follow no causal laws. That God, the creator of the early Bible never was hidden but stands before your face — it is the Universe itself and as you interact with it, you create ever new possibilities which in turn create new actual things (my pot + your interaction creates a new drum which might create a different sort of music ….). Nature itself is in this dance and we are just one of the dancers that have enough observation to be self-aware. There never will be a grand unified theory because the world is creative being that has many bounds and many possibilities, but follows no deterministic laws.
If we can survive the dark side of this deterministic soulless age with this new realization, the next age is is one of coupled creation and creativity as an expression of, not separate from, nature. He’s undoutably wrong on many points, but is correct on his central point and like enlightenment, the world is never the same.