Life's complexity: self-organization, evolution or both?

In Roger Lewin's _Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos_, at the end of Chapter 7 "Complexity and the Reality of Progress", there is a paragraph that nicely summarizes the differences between two major paradigms -- that of evolution and that of complex systems theory:

"The pure Spencerian view of the world, therefore, is that increased complexity is an inevitable manifestation of the system and is driven by the internal dynamics of complex systems: heterogeneity from from homogeneity, order out of chaos. The pure Darwinian view is that complexity is built solely by natural selection, a blind, nondirectional force; and there is no inevitable rise in complexity. The new science of Complexity combines elements of both: internal and external forces apply, and increased complexity is to be expected as a fundamental property of complex dynamical systems. A fundamental property of complex adaptive systems is the counterintuitive crystallization of order -- order for free, in Stu Kauffman's terms -- upon which selection may act. Such systems may, through selection, bring themselves to the edge of chaos, a constant process of coevolution, a constant adaptation. Part of the lure of the edge of chaos is an optimization of computational ability, whether the system is a cellular automaton or a biological species evolving with others as part of a complex ecological community. At the edge of chaos, bigger brains are built."

"Is human consciousness to be found there, too?"

--p. 149


By the "Spencerian view" he's referering to Herbert Spencer, the 19th century English intellectual who had a grand theory about the condensation of order from disorder -- heterogeneity from homogeneity as he called it. He said that dynamic systems have a tendency to become more concentrated and heterogeneous as they evolve. He called it The Law of Evolution, but Spencer was talking about all dynamical systems, not just biological systems -- physical worlds, biological worlds, and social worlds. The formation of stars and galaxies, living organisms, nations and societies.


--dkomo@xxxxxxxx

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