The Systems View of Life - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Systems View of Life write by Fritjof Capra. This book was released on 2014-04-10. The Systems View of Life available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The first volume to integrate life's biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions into a single, coherent framework.
Learning from Leonardo
Learning from Leonardo - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Learning from Leonardo write by Fritjof Capra. This book was released on 2013-11-19. Learning from Leonardo available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant artist, scientist, engineer, mathematician, architect, inventor, and even musician—the archetypal Renaissance man. But he was also a profoundly modern man. Not only did Leonardo invent the empirical scientific method over a century before Galileo and Francis Bacon, but Capra's decade-long study of Leonardo's fabled notebooks reveals that he was a systems thinker centuries before the term was coined. At the very core of Leonardo's science, Capra argues, lies his persistent quest for understanding the nature of life. His science is a science of living forms, of qualities and patterns, radically different from the mechanistic science that emerged 200 years later. Because he saw the world as an integrated whole, Leonardo always applied concepts from one area to illuminate problems in another. His studies of the movement of water informed his ideas about how landscapes are shaped, how sap rises in plants, how air moves over a bird's wing, and how blood flows in the human body. His observations of nature enhanced his art, his drawings were integral to his scientific studies, and he brought art, science, and technology together in his beautiful and elegant mechanical and architectural designs. Capra describes seven defining characteristics of Leonardo da Vinci's genius and includes a list of over forty discoveries he made that weren't rediscovered until centuries later. Capra follows the organizational scheme Leonardo himself intended to use if he ever published his notebooks. So in a sense, this is Leonardo's science as he himself would have presented it. Obviously, we can't all be geniuses on the scale of Leonardo da Vinci. But his persistent endeavor to put life at the very center of his art, science, and design and his recognition that all natural phenomena are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent are important lessons we can learn from. By exploring the mind of the preeminent Renaissance genius, we can gain profound insights into how to address the complex challenges of the 21st century.
The Web of Life
The Web of Life - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Web of Life write by Fritjof Capra. This book was released on 1997-09-15. The Web of Life available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The vitality and accessibility of Fritjof Capra's ideas have made him perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson of the latest findings emerging at the frontiers of scientific, social, and philosophical thought. In his international bestsellers The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point, he juxtaposed physics and mysticism to define a new vision of reality. In The Web of Life, Capra takes yet another giant step, setting forth a new scientific language to describe interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena--the "web of life." During the past twenty-five years, scientists have challenged conventional views of evolution and the organization of living systems and have developed new theories with revolutionary philosophical and social implications. Fritjof Capra has been at the forefront of this revolution. In The Web of Life, Capra offers a brilliant synthesis of such recent scientific breakthroughs as the theory of complexity, Gaia theory, chaos theory, and other explanations of the properties of organisms, social systems, and ecosystems. Capra's surprising findings stand in stark contrast to accepted paradigms of mechanism and Darwinism and provide an extraordinary new foundation for ecological policies that will allow us to build and sustain communities without diminishing the opportunities for future generations. Now available in paperback for the first time, The Web of Life is cutting-edge science writing in the tradition of James Gleick's Chaos, Gregory Bateson's Mind and Matter, and Ilya Prigogine's Order Out of Chaos.
The Ecology of Law
The Ecology of Law - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Ecology of Law write by Fritjof Capra. This book was released on 2015-10-05. The Ecology of Law available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly
The Emergence of Life
The Emergence of Life - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Emergence of Life write by Pier Luigi Luisi. This book was released on 2006-07-13. The Emergence of Life available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The origin of life from inanimate matter has been the focus of much research for decades, both experimentally and philosophically. Luisi takes the reader through the consecutive stages from prebiotic chemistry to synthetic biology, uniquely combining both approaches. This book presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms. A chapter is dedicated to each of these steps, using a number of synthetic and biological examples. With end-of-chapter review questions to aid reader comprehension, this book will appeal to graduate students and academics researching the origin of life and related areas such as evolutionary biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and natural sciences.
