Hi, everybody,
One of the activities I would like to encourage in ComplexityNoodles is collaborative reviews of important books. Rosen has attracted considerable discussion both in Friam and in a Blender a few weeks back, so I imagine that Friamers may be interested in helping to create a collaborative review of his book, Life Itself. I have been carrying around Steve Guerin's copy of this book for the last month, and it does, at the very minimum, seem like serious work to me. What I mean by "serious" is that even though it is very hard to read, and contains many odd usages of terms, still, it is worthy of our respect if only because the author is consistent in the use of his own language.
So, as I get time, I am going to do a systematic review of the Chapters of Life Itself and post them at http://www.sfcomplex.org/wiki/RosenNoodles My colleague and old friend, John Kennison, a mathematician, is going to help me out. He is interesting in establishing whether the mathematics in Life Itself are necessary to the project or whether they are windowdressing. I hope others will join us. I will need all the help I can get coming to terms with this challenging book.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
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