More Than Life Itself PDF Download

Author: A. H. Louie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110321947
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 412

View

Book Description
A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings.

Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262042819
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

View

Book Description
A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.

Author: Roger Ebert
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 0446584983
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353

View

Book Description
Named one of the 100 greatest film books of all time by The Hollywood Reporter, this singular, warm-hearted, inspiring look at life itself is "the best thing Mr. Ebert has ever written" (Janet Maslin, New York Times). "To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out." Roger Ebert was the best-known film critic of his time. He began reviewing films for the Chicago Sun-Times in1967, and was the first film critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. He appeared on television for four decades. In 2006, complications from thyroid cancer treatment resulted in the loss of his abi)lity to eat, drink, or speak. But with the loss of his voice, Ebert became a more prolific and influential writer. And in Life Itself he told the full, dramatic story of his life and career. In this candid, personal history, Ebert chronicled it all: his loves, losses, and obsessions; his struggle and recovery from alcoholism; his marriage; his politics; and his spiritual beliefs. He wrote about his years at the Sun-Times, his colorful newspaper friends, and his life-changing collaboration with Gene Siskel. He shared his insights into movie stars and directors like John Wayne and Martin Scorsese. This is a story that only Roger Ebert could tell, filled with the same deep insight, dry wit, and sharp observations that his readers have long cherished,

Author: Robert Rosen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231075640
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
Why are living things alive? As a theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen saw this as the most fundamental of all questions-and yet it had never been answered satisfactorily by science. The answers to this question would allow humanity to make an enormous leap forward in our understanding of the principles at work in our world. For centuries, it was believed that the only scientific approach to the question "What is life?" must proceed from the Cartesian metaphor (organism as machine). Classical approaches in science, which also borrow heavily from Newtonian mechanics, are based on a process called "reductionism." The thinking was that we can better learn about an intricate, complicated system (like an organism) if we take it apart, study the components, and then reconstruct the system-thereby gaining an understanding of the whole. However, Rosen argues that reductionism does not work in biology and ignores the complexity of organisms. Life Itself, a landmark work, represents the scientific and intellectual journey that led Rosen to question reductionism and develop new scientific approaches to understanding the nature of life. Ultimately, Rosen proposes an answer to the original question about the causal basis of life in organisms. He asserts that renouncing the mechanistic and reductionistic paradigm does not mean abandoning science. Instead, Rosen offers an alternate paradigm for science that takes into account the relational impacts of organization in natural systems and is based on organized matter rather than on particulate matter alone. Central to Rosen's work is the idea of a "complex system," defined as any system that cannot be fully understood by reducing it to its parts. In this sense, complexity refers to the causal impact of organization on the system as a whole. Since both the atom and the organism can be seen to fit that description, Rosen asserts that complex organization is a general feature not just of the biosphere on Earth-but of the universe itself.

Author: Elaine Dundy
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 1405514914
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

View

Book Description
Author of the celebrated and hilarious THE DUD AVOCADO, the classic novel about a young American ingenue in Paris, Elaine Dundy was born in New York in the 1930s. Her first years were spent in an apartment on Park Avenue until the stock market crash wiped out most of the family's money. She went to university in the south where, among other studies, she worked hard at losing her virginity. Deciding the stage was her true home, Elaine Dundy headed first to Paris and then to London, where she met and married the famous theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. Though their union was intoxicating, it was far from easy and the successful publication in 1958 of her novel finished off the marriage. But it was the opening of a new world of writers for Elaine Dundy, including friendships with Tennessee Williams, Hemingway and Gore Vidal. Extremely funny and extraordinarily honest this wonderfully remembered story of growing up in America is as much a tonic as life itself.

Author: Francis Crick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780356077369
Category : Life
Languages : en
Pages : 192

View

Book Description

Author: Boyce Rensberger
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Cells
Languages : en
Pages : 314

View

Book Description
In Amazing Life, Boyce Rensberger takes readers to the frontlines of cell research with some of the brightest investigators in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. The hottest topics in biomedical research are covered.

Author: Robert Rosen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231105118
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 380

View

Book Description
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.

Author: Unmani Liza Hyde
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1430315520
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 106

View

Book Description
Finally waking up from the dream. The end of the search. The end of searching for that which has never been anywhere but right here. The end of trying to know. This is absolute not-knowing. Forever falling in absolute insecurity. Simply the direct recognition of what is. This is what I am. I am Life itself. Unmani points to the nature of Life itself with clarity and simplicity.

Author: David Grossman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593312597
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

View

Book Description
INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • A remarkable novel of suffering, love, and healing—the story of three generations of women on an unlikely journey to a Croatian island and a secret that needs to be told—from the internationally best-selling author of To the End of the Land “A magnificent book ... The way Grossman writes about these regions is unique, with a deep understanding of our experience.” —Josip Mlakić, Express (Croatia) More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili—abandoned by Nina when she was just three—has always been close to her grandmother. With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together to Goli Otok, a barren island off the coast of Croatia, where Vera was imprisoned and tortured for three years as a young wife after she refused to betray her husband and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey—filtered through the lens of Gili’s camera, as she seeks to make a film that might help explain her life—lays bare the intertwining of fear, love, and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion. More Than I Love My Life was inspired by the true story of one of David Grossman’s longtime confidantes, a woman who, in the early 1950s, was held on the notorious Goli Otok (“the Adriatic Alcatraz”). With flashbacks to the stalwart Vera protecting what was most precious on the wretched rock where she was held, and Grossman’s fearless examination of the human heart, this swift novel is a thrilling addition to the oeuvre of one of our greatest living novelists, whose revered moral voice continues to resonate around the world.