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Available
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Publication
Inner Ocean Publishing (2003), 344 pages
Description
Publisher's description: Biocosm challenges both sides of the controversy over evolution and creationism. This carefully reasoned book proposes that life and intelligence have not emerged as a series of random accidents, as Darwinists like Stephen Jay Gould have maintained, but are hardwired into the cycle of cosmic creation, evolution, death, and rebirth. Gardner's theory of an exponential coevolution of biological and electronic intelligence, designed and directed, offers an extraordinary vision of a universe of point and purpose.
User reviews
LibraryThing member fpagan
Far-out hypothesis of why our universe is bio-friendly, purporting to provide a non-theological basis for the Strong Anthropic Principle. The universe's fundamental constants and laws were influenced by the super-evolved denizens of its progenitor universe, which in turn was shaped by the life in
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*its* progenitor, and so on. This may mesh with "ekpyrotic" cosmology, the new alternative to inflation cosmology, described in a recent Scientific American article. Show Less
LibraryThing member fernig
We are living through the greatest cosmological revolution in human history. It is more profound than the 17th century revolution because the facts of chemistry and biology are being integrated into a coherent historical cosmology. In later life Newton was preoccupied with alchemy and Biblical
The Selfish Biocosm quotes extensively from contemporary astrophysists and biologists. These include Sir Martin Reese (Astronomer Royal and author of several “popular” science books including Just Six Numbers), the Belgian Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve (author of Life Evolving) and the more controversial American physicists Lee Smolin and Stuart Kaufman. The Selfish Biocosm serves as an excellent introduction to these thinkers (and it is worth reading for this reason alone).
At the risk of grossly oversimplifying the work of these scientists, the general tendency of their thought can be reduced to two principles.
1. The appearance of intelligent life in the Universe is not an arbitrary accident. Eventually we will have a rational scientific explanation as universal and compelling as our explanation of the appearance of the elements of the periodic table.
2. We now know that our universe has a history. Like all things that have a history, it may not be unique. It may be part of a multiverse.
James N. Gardner takes all these ideas one step further: “The essence of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis, after all, is that the anthropic qualities that our universe exhibits can be explained as incidental consequences of a cosmic replication cycle in which a cosmologically extended biosphere provides the means by which our cosmos duplicates itself and propagates one or more baby universes.” (p. 231). This is Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene hypothesis played out on a cosmic stage. Even if you are not prepared to follow Gardner into this exotic territory, the Selfish Biocosm remains a provocative and interesting read.
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exegesis. But several centuries were to elapse before chemistry and life could be subsumed under a set of scientific explanations as rigorous as those that Newton had brought to physics.The Selfish Biocosm quotes extensively from contemporary astrophysists and biologists. These include Sir Martin Reese (Astronomer Royal and author of several “popular” science books including Just Six Numbers), the Belgian Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve (author of Life Evolving) and the more controversial American physicists Lee Smolin and Stuart Kaufman. The Selfish Biocosm serves as an excellent introduction to these thinkers (and it is worth reading for this reason alone).
At the risk of grossly oversimplifying the work of these scientists, the general tendency of their thought can be reduced to two principles.
1. The appearance of intelligent life in the Universe is not an arbitrary accident. Eventually we will have a rational scientific explanation as universal and compelling as our explanation of the appearance of the elements of the periodic table.
2. We now know that our universe has a history. Like all things that have a history, it may not be unique. It may be part of a multiverse.
James N. Gardner takes all these ideas one step further: “The essence of the Selfish Biocosm hypothesis, after all, is that the anthropic qualities that our universe exhibits can be explained as incidental consequences of a cosmic replication cycle in which a cosmologically extended biosphere provides the means by which our cosmos duplicates itself and propagates one or more baby universes.” (p. 231). This is Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene hypothesis played out on a cosmic stage. Even if you are not prepared to follow Gardner into this exotic territory, the Selfish Biocosm remains a provocative and interesting read.
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Physical description
344 p.; 8.96 inches
ISBN
1930722222 / 9781930722224