Stuart Kauffman (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, February 06, 2015, 18:29 (3577 days ago) @ BBella


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> Bbella: Thanks, dhw, for pulling out this quote. I may order his book (Reinventing the Sacred) in hopes to find time to read it. The "participatory universe" he speaks of, I believe, is along the path of ideas I've been hoping some of the discussions here will eventually lead to.-I've read Kauffman's book, At Home in the Universe,, 1995, and quoted him extensively in my book, Science vs. Religion, 2004. He is extremely widely educated with an M.D. to start with. He does not think an RNA world can create life and evolution and insists the universe and life must be self-organizing. He points to theoretical 'auto-catalytic sets' as a possibility for this self-organization and did a great deal of work in computers to prove the point. The problem he has, as I see it, is in any computerized evolutionary program, a human being has to insert information so the program can evolve. In our evolution we still don't know scientifically where the underlying genomic information came from. It can't just invent itself. I'm not surprised at his evolution to wondering about panpsychism since he insists that an organizing principal or an organizer is required. He is with me. He doesn't accept chance.