The Chance of Life
About this book
This book presents a comprehensive theory of evolution based on a new physicochemical approach of energy flow throughout the material world that addresses the question of, “how” complex adaptive systems have emerged throughout the 4.5 billion years life of the earth. Up until this writing, most books on evolution from Darwin to Jay Maynard Smith, have dealt with “what” of evolution at a descriptive level. Recently, a few erudite, but partial attempts have addressed the question of, “how” evolution has come about.Thermoinfocomplexity is a synthetic and comprehensive theory that combines the stochastic interplay of energy and information based on the principles of thermodynamics, information, and complexity theories to explain the emergence of increasingly complex adaptive systems, from molecule, to man, society, and Gaia. A scale-free theory, Thermoinfocomplexity demonstrates the fundamental similarities that exist between the course of a river, weather patterns, biological systems, and the superorganisms of human societies. It carefully develops the physicochemical rationale behind the emergence of more-complex systems, selected for, based on their efficient utilization of extracted Gibbs free energy from the environment. In doing so, Thermoinfocomplexity explains the negative scaling laws of metabolic efficiency, from biological systems to the modern metropolis. Although this book largely explores the theory’s application to chemical evolution, biology, and human society, Thermoinfocomplexity has predictive applications that may well reveal the future trajectory of many complex adaptive systems, including the global human superorganism.