From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning - Brief Article - Book Review

Edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen. Oxford University Press, 2003. 243 pp., $35, hardcover. Volume of essays originating from a research symposium, "Complexity, Information, and Design: A Critical Appraisal," in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1999. Fundamental questions of the steady emergence of organized complexity are dealt with front leading scientists in complexity studies.

Physicist Paul Davies outlines the basic ideas of an emergentist worldview. Mathematicians Gregory Chaitin and Charles Bennett present their computational definitions of complexity. Stuart Kauffman writes on the emergence of autonomous agents. Paul Davies discusses complexity and the arrow of time. Ian Stewart examines tire Second law of Gravitics and the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. Editor Niels Henrik Gregersen concludes with a chapter on "From Anthropic Design to Self-Organized Complexity."

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