Complexity and Evolution

A book which explores the many links between the physical, biological and social sciences.

Max Pettersson (Author), Joseph Needham (Foreword by)

9780521454001, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 October 1996

158 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.38 kg

"...this brief book serves its purpose if it provokes the reader to develope a more critical synoptic view of the whole shebang. I recommend it." Arthur Falk, The Quarterly Review of Biology

This unique book ranges across the physical, biological and social sciences in the development of its primary theme, that there are nine major 'integrative levels' which can be recognised. The term integrative levels was first used by Joseph Needham in 1937 and has two key features. The first is that members of a given integrative level are unified entities and the second is that a member of one level is commonly composed of parts which are members of the next lower level. Thus fundamental particles form Level 1 while Level 9 is that of sovereign states. This theme has been developed by Max Pettersson in a book which explores the many links between the physical, biological and social sciences, reaching wide-ranging and sometimes unexpected conclusions.

Foreword by Joseph Needham
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Natural and other hierarchies
2. Major integrative levels
3. Some logarithmic forms of display
4. Physical range of integrated natural entities
5. Biological range of integrated natural entities (part one)
6. Biological range of integrated natural entities (part two)
7. Social range of integrated natural entities
8. Human societies (part one)
9. Human societies (part two)
10. Acceleration in evolution
11. Further allied accelerations
12. Aspects of number
13. Aspects of man
14. Positive skewness
15. Quantitative conclusions
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Evolution [PSAJ]