Essays on Life Itself

Robert Rosen

$240.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Columbia University Press
23 November 1999

Philosophy of science; Biology, life sciences; Earth sciences

Series: Complexity in Ecological Systems

Compiling twenty articles on the nature of life and on the objective of the natural sciences, this remarkable book complements Robert Rosen's groundbreaking Life Itself-a work that influenced a wide range of philosophers, biologists, linguists, and social scientists. In Essays on Life Itself, Rosen takes to task the central objective of the natural sciences, calling into question the attempt to create objectivity in a subjective world and forcing us to reconsider where science can lead us in the years to come.

By: Robert Rosen
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 158mm,
Weight: 680g
ISBN: 9780231105101
ISBN 10: 023110510X
Series: Complexity in Ecological Systems
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 23 November 1999
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface Part I : On Biology and Physics 1. The Schrodinger Question, What Is Life? Fifty-Five Years Later 2. Biological Challenges to Contemporary Paradigms of Physics and Mimetics 3. What Is Biology? Part II : On Biology and the Mind 4. The Church-Pythagoras Thesis 5. Drawing the Boundary Between Subject and Object: Comments on the Mind-Brain Problem 6. Mind as Phenotype 7. On Psychomimesis 8. The Mind-Brain Problem and the Physics of Reductionism Part III : On Genericity 9. Genericity as Information 10. Syntactics and Semantics in Languages 11. How Universal Is a Universal Unfolding? 12. System Closure and Dynamical Degeneracy 13. Some Random Thoughts About Chaos and Some Chaotic Thoughts About Randomness Part IV: Similarity and Dissimilarity in Biology 14. Optimality in Biology and Medicine 15. Morphogenesis in Networks 16. Order and Disorder in Biological Control Systems 17. What Does It Take to Make an Organism? Part V: On Biology and Technology 18. Some Lessons of Biology 19. Bionics Revisited 20. On the Philosophy of Craft 21. Cooperation and Chimera 22. Are Our Modeling Paradigms Nongeneric? References Index

Robert Rosen was professor emeritus of biophysics at Dalhousie University and the author of books including Life Itself (Columbia 1991), Principles of Mathematical Biology, and Principles of Measurement.

Reviews for Essays on Life Itself

These 22 essays are intended for serious thinkers, as they are provocative and often iconoclastic. There are many new ideas, daring perspectives, and challenging modes of interpretation of concepts that readers may have mistakenly thought they understood... I am equally sure that readers will enjoy and benefit from these essays. -- Bruce J. West, The Quarterly Review of Biology