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| Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion | 
| Author: Stuart Kauffman
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (23 reviews)
Sales Rank: 10763
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0465003001
Dewey Decimal Number: 215
EAN: 9780465003006
ASIN: 0465003001
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
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Product Description
Consider the woven integrated complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awe-inspiring to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell, or to consider that the living organism was created by the evolving biosphere? As the eminent complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman explains in this ambitious and groundbreaking new book, people who do not believe in God have largely lost their sense of the sacred and the deep human legitimacy of our inherited spirituality. For those who believe in a Creator God, no science will ever disprove that belief. In Reinventing the Sacred, Kauffman argues that the science of complexity provides a way to move beyond reductionist science to something new: a unified culture where we see God in the creativity of the universe, biosphere, and humanity. Kauffman explains that the ceaseless natural creativity of the world can be a profound source of meaning, wonder, and further grounding of our place in the universe. His theory carries with it a new ethic for an emerging civilization and a reinterpretation of the divine. He asserts that we are impelled by the imperative of life itself to live with faith and courage-and the fact that we do so is indeed sublime. Reinventing the Sacred will change the way we all think about the evolution of humanity, the universe, faith, and reason.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Sacred!! October 28, 2008
Great book. As scientist I think that the opinnion of Dr. Kauffmans in this kind of issues always have something to change. Reinventing the sacred Searches for the divinity in a natural world whit a lot of creativity. I totally convinced that if there is a God, is not a guy whit beard and sandals.
Elan vital redux September 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Much of this wonderful book can be summed up with two quotes from philosopher Henri Bergson: "So that life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate energy and then let it flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work" and "Life in its entirety, regarded as a creative evolution, is something analogous; it transcends finality, if we understand by finality the realization of an idea conceived or conceivable in advance." Kauffman makes great strides in teasing out the details of these ideas and more, and an elan vital which fully conforms to all thermodynamic laws is evident throughout. But why no mention of Bergson in this most Bergsonian of modern books?
A Beautiful Book, But Missing Just One Thing September 20, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book was a pleasure to read, very well-written and effectively integrating many important concepts from physics, biology, philosophy, cosmology, neurology, law, current events, economics, and other topics into a perspective that finds awe in the unfolding creativity of the biosphere and our role in it.
The author convincingly argues that the reductionstic perspective of much modern science is incomplete, and that there are emergent qualities in biologic systems that cannot be fully explained by the physical determinism of cells and physics. Because of this, we should view the inherent creativity of the biosphere as sacred, and reverence it as "God." If we can cultivate this perspective, it will create a shared understanding among diverse people and develop global interconnectedness and harmony which is increasingly crucial in our modern world situation, overcoming the cultural and religious differences that lead to conflict among us.
Part of this book's thesis is that biological systems are fundamentally self-organizing, sustaining, and adapting, thus being "acausal" and needing no "first cause" (which removes one of the classic conceptions of God.) In my view, however, "acausal" is not synonymous with "spontaneous" or "random," and Kauffman is merely ascribing to quantum uncertainty the role of "unmoved mover."
In making the case for how we have no need for a transcendent Creator God, however, one important question is never asked, or even mentioned: "What happens to 'me' when I die?" Each of us is fundamentally concerned with this question. Whether we will learn the answer, however, depends on what is the reality of our consciousness. If consciousness ends with the cessation of one's biologic existence, then the only prospect we can look forward to is an instant dissolution of self, a horrifying prospect precisely for all the same reasons Kauffman identifies life as sacred. Death is the ultimate sacrilege to such sacredness, and Kauffman's "God" has no relevance or answer for the individual in this fundamental conflict. While feelings of spirituality, sacredness, and reverence are all attributes of people's orientation toward a God figure, the primary role of a "God" is mediating one's orientation toward post-mortem existence, and all of a lifetime ultimately becomes a reconcilation with the unavoidable prospect of approaching death. Kauffman's notion of "God," while esthetically beautiful, amounts to essentially ignoring this concern and putting a smile on your face as you approach your final hour.
But for many of us, our very existence recoils from the prospect of individual annihilation, the "life" within us desires continuation before all other desires. The first purpose of life is to continue living. Therefore Kauffman's "God" is the food which does not satisfy. In seeking God, we desire an agency that transcends death and can sustain us for eternity. This is why the notion of a transcendent "God" remains in our deepest instincts through all human history. It is unfortunate that Kauffman did not address what his conception of "God" means for the prospect of individual death. This is a very significant omission in the book, as any viable conception of God must address this fundamental subject.
Nevertheless this book is a very stimulating and excellent contribution that advances discussion regarding integration of modern science, reason and religion, and as such is great a read for all who are concerned with such matters.
Can an Immanent God be Sacred? September 17, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read Stuart Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred with some anticipation because Stu had been a classmate of mine in medical school. I knew then that he was on to something interesting and that he would go on to do something creative that we all could be proud of. Interestingly, another classmate, Joe Goldyne, went on to become a famous artist, so I have an extra reason to be proud to be an alumnus of the class of '68 at UC San Francisco. Anyway, Stu's book did not disappoint me, and I would like to take this opportunity to make some comments on the points which I find the most interesting.
Dr Kauffman does a good job of criticizing reductionism, which is Laplace's view that the universe is one huge machine and that all future events have been predetermined, including human actions. This mechanistic view of the world, which allowed the West to develop the scientific method and make great strides in understanding and controlling nature, does not leave much room for such concepts as ethics, esthetics, and, especially, free will. A universe that consists of an extremely complex series of events resulting from a gazillion particles of matter in motion interacting in a cause and effect manner cannot explain all the fun things about life and leads such a brilliant scientist as Stephen Weinberg to conclude: "explanatory arrows always point downward" and "the more we comprehend the universe, the more pointless it seems" (page 10). Reductionism involves supervenience, which is a term philosopers use to describe how higher level or more complex actions correlate exactly with and are determined completely by lower level actions. One example is that the properties of water are correlated with and determined by the molecular actions of hydrogen and oxygen. Another example is that the complex patterns of firing by cerebral neurons can lead to thoughts and ideas. In both cases the higher level activity is explained by the lower level, which is to say it is "reduced" to the lower level.
Reductionism helps scientists to understand how natural processes work, but does it really explain everything? Dr Kauffman explains the concept of "emergence": "The behavior of large and complex aggregates of elementary particles, it turns out, is not to be understood in terms of a simple extrapolation of the properties of a few particles. Instead, at each level of complexity entirely new properties appear, and the understanding of the new behaviors requires reseach which I think is as fundamental in its nature as any other" (page 21). Any chemist knows that he/she cannot completely understand the actions of chemical compounds simply by knowing the behavior of elementary particles.
While it is obvious that the principles of chemistry emerge from the more basic principles of physics, it is not so obvious that thoughts or ideas can emerge from neuronal firing no matter how complex (refer to Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop). Water, hydrogen, and oxygen have different properties, but they are still forms of matter and differ only quantitatively. Ideas are qualitatively different from neurons. Furthermore, it is impossible to be supervenient about ideas and neurons. The difference is that Ideas consist of meanings or understanding, which are immaterial and cannot be reduced to particles of matter in mortion. Take as an example the simple Idea: "I love you." Under most circumstances when this idea is communicated there is a physical response from the autonomic nervous system (flushing, diaphoresis, tachycardia, xerostomia) and the motor pathways of the central nervous system (hugs and kisses). Yet the message itself can consist of sound waves (vocal utterings, morse code, or drums in hundreds of different languages), photons (writing, sign language, semaphore again in different languages), or tactile sensations (Braille). There is no way you can correlate the physical responses with the mechanics of the message. The only reality in this case is semantics involving a conscious mind which understands the meaning of the message.
Dr Kauffman explores the conscious mind, and, like predecessors such as Sir John Eccles (How the Self Controls Its Brain) and Roger Penrose (The Emperor's New Mind), he looks to the world of quantum mechanics for an answer. This is a good idea. I mentioned above that the scientific method received a big boost from a mechanistic view of the world. If all events result from specific preceding causes, then the scientist can find out what these causes are. Interestingly, this scientific method allowed brilliant minds, such as Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, to explore the world of elementary particles and conclude that the quantum world does NOT operate in a mechanistic, cause and effect manner but rather is holistic and acausal. Dr Kauffman maintains: "the conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior." (page 209). I would like to point out, however, that just because the quantum world is acausal does not mean that the conscious mind has a free will, and being holistic does not necessarily explain how semantics can cause mental phenomena. We are still in the mystical realm of "warm and fuzzy" explanations if we want to establish a self capable of free will. I still think that Descartes was on the right track.
Dr Kauffman has spent his career showing how principles of self-organization can explain the evolution of biological systems (see chapter 8 - Order for Free). I have always thought that Darwinian natural selection is too clumsy and slow to account for such a complex thing as language. The human brain has 100 billion neurons which have over 1000 synapses each, resulting in an almost infinitely complex system. To explain the complex organization of language as the result of trial and error via random genetic mutations is just not feasible. There must be some sort of self-organization involved in this.
Finally, we get to the main point of the book - God exists! Dr Kauffman does a nice job of showing how self-organization and emergence can explain how purpose and creativity (God) arose as biological systems became more and more complex. Nevertheless I have some difficulty with this. I cannot fault his reasoning, but I have always thought of God as He has been described by my Jewish-Christian-Muslim-Baha'i ancestors - He is an eternal, transcendent Being who created the universe out of nothing by an act of His free will. I might add that the Big Bang theory is consistent with this. Dr Kauffman's God is immanent within this world and subject to its laws, as were the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. The main point of developing the concept of God is to explain human creativity and to give purpose to our lives, which I find much harder to do with a God that comes after the fact. I know that it plays havoc with Ockham's razor to use an eternal, transcendent, willful God to explain the origins of the universe, but it sure makes it easier for me to find meaning and purpose in life.
Thanks, Stu, for having written this book. I'm glad that I knew you back when.
Some frontier science with a goodwill message September 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Faced with a new mutation in an organism, or a fundamental changeFITNESS-- in its living conditions, the biologist is frequently in no position whatever to predict its future prospects. He has to wait and see. For instance, the hairy mammoth seems to have been an admirable animal, intelligent and well-accoutered. Now that it is extinct, we try to understand why it failed. I doubt that any biologist thinks he could have predicted that failure. Fitness and survival are by nature estimates of past performance." George Wald, Nobel Prize winner.
This book has two main general ideas: One is that reductionism, although an extremely successful philosophy of science, does not suffice to explain reality. The other is that the ceaseless creativity of the universe, that part that escapes reductionism, should be revered as "the sacred". Kauffman calls this "God" in an effort of "rapprochement" between agnostics and religious people, since he envisages a future global civilization.
The first idea is developed mainly in the context of evolution in the chapter titled "The Nonreducibility of Biology to Physics", although some physicists, such as Laughlin, are also mentioned, temperature being a classical example of emergent physical phenomena. Kauffman claims that evolution cannot be predicted and, as we see in the citation above, he is not alone. He makes similar claims for the economy, human mind, human history, our legal system, etc.
The second idea is not that new either and Kauffman himself admits that his idea of God is similar to Spinoza's.
Kauffman tries to search for some general laws for emergent phenomena and he hints some of them, including some mathematics of graph theory and random Boolean networks and the use of some concepts such as "minimal molecular autonomous agent". He says, for example: "This raises the fascinating but unproven possibility that , due to natural selection, life achieves a maximization of the product of total work done multiplied by the diversity of work done by being dynamically critical. Then cells would be maximally efficient in carrying out the widest variety of tasks with the maximum total work accomplished, given energy resources available".
The author also suggests that the origin of life might have been systems of autocatalytic molecules and thinks that "self-organization, order for free, is as much a part of evolution and natural selection as historically frozen accidents".
The most controversial chapter, as Kauffman readily admits, is the one about the quantum brain in which he takes the idea of Penrose, which has not had many followers so far. Kauffman believes that the human mind is not algorithmic. Euler's creation of topology by solving the Koenisberg's bridges problem is an example, according to Kauffman, of the non algorithmic operation of the human brain. He ads that computations are devoid of meaning, they are purely syntactic. This flies in the face of the strong artificial intelligence theory of consciousness. Kauffman says that meaning derives from agency. Although a controversial idea, a quantum brain, however, would help to solve such hard problems as free will since quantum mechanics is an acausal theory.
The author believes that the conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior. Recent studies seem to prove that chlorophyll maintains a quantum coherent state for a very long time compared to chemical-bond-vibration frequencies. So may be this hypothesis of the quantum brain is not so far fetched.
The last chapters are dedicated to ethics and to an effort to reach out to religious people and Kauffman is aware that convergence of agnostics and religious people can take generations and that we may never fully agree.
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