The Nature of Consciousness

Piero Scaruffi

These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"

13. The Physics of Life The Origin Of Self-organization: Life As Negative Entropy Life as Non-equilibrium Cycles Bioenergetics The Evolution of Complex Systems The Origin of Biological Information The Primacy Of Energy Flows A Hierarchy of Lives The Irreversibility of Life The Origin of Form Differentiation Self-formation Topobiology Epigenetic landscape Catastrophes Vitalism The Memory of Nature and Morphic Fields Beyond Chemistry: Tensegrity The Function of Growth Interactivity Life and the Universe The Omega Point The Meaning of Life Universal Darwinism

Further Reading (Click here for reviews of these books)   Abraham, Ralph: ON MORPHODYNAMICS (Aerial Press, 1985) Atkins, Peter-Williams: THE SECOND LAW (WH Freeman, 1984) Bateson, Gregory: MIND AND NATURE (Dutton, 1979) Brooks, Daniel & Wiley E.O.: EVOLUTION AS ENTROPY (Univ of Chicago Press, 1986) Carvalo, Marc: NATURE, COGNITION AND SYSTEM (Kluwer Academic, 1988) Davies, Paul: THE FIFTH MIRACLE (Simon & Schuster, 1998) Driesch, Hans: SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM (Black, 1908) Dyson, Freeman: INFINITE IN ALL DIRECTIONS (Harper & Row, 1988) Elsasser, Walter: THE CHIEF ABSTRACTIONS OF BIOLOGY (1975) Fox Ronald: ENERGY AND THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE (Freeman, 1988) Ganti ,Tibor: THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE (Omikk, 1971) Goodwin, Brian: HOW THE LEOPARD CHANGED ITS SPOTS (Charles Scribner, 1994) Hutchinson, Evelyn: THE ECOLOGICAL THEATER AND THE EVOLUTIONARY PLAY (1965) Islam, Jamal: THE ULTIMATE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983) Jansch, Erich: THE SELF-ORGANIZING UNIVERSE (Pergamon, 1980) Kauffman, Stuart: THE ORIGINS OF ORDER (Oxford University Press, 1993) Kestin, Joseph: A COURSE IN THERMODYNAMICS (Blaisdell, 1966) Kuppers, Bernd-Olaf: INFORMATION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE (MIT Press, 1990) Langton, Christopher: ARTIFICIAL LIFE (Addison-Wesley, 1989) Layzer, David: COSMOGENESIS (Oxford University Press, 1990) Lotka, Alfred: ELEMENTS OF MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY (Dover, 1925) Margalef, Ramon: PERSPECTIVES IN ECOLOGICAL THEORY (Univ of Chicago Press, 1968) Maynard-Smith, John: EVOLUTIONARY GENETICS (Oxford University Press, 1989) Mikulecky, Donald: APPLICATIONS OF NETWORK THERMODYNAMICS PROBLEMS IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING (New York University Press, 1993) Morowitz, Harold: ENERGY FLOW IN BIOLOGY (Academic Press, 1968) Morowitz, Harold: FOUNDATIONS OF BIOENERGETICS (Academic Press, 1978) Morowitz, Harold: ENTROPY AND THE MAGIC FLUTE (Oxford University Press, 1993) Murray, James Dickson: MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGY (Springer-Verlag, 1993) Nowak, Martin: EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS (2006) Odum, Eugene: FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY (1953) Oyama, Susan: ONTOGENY OF INFORMATION (Cambridge University Press, 1985) Plotkin, Henry: DARWIN MACHINES AND THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE (Harvard University Press, 1994) Plotkin, Henry: EVOLUTION IN MIND (Allen Lane, 1997) Prigogine, Ilya: FROM BEING TO BECOMING (W.H. Freeman, 1980) Schneider, Eric & Sagan, Dorion: INTO THE COOL (Univ of Chicago Press, 2005) Schroedinger  Erwin: WHAT IS LIFE (Cambridge Univ Press, 1944) Sheldrake, Rupert: A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE (J.P. Tarcher, 1981) Sheldrake, Rupert: THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST (Times Books, 1988) Speman, Hans: EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT AND INDUCTION (Yale Univ Press, 1938) Thom, Rene: STRUCTURAL STABILITY AND MORPHOGENESIS (1968) Thompson, D'Arcy: ON GROWTH AND FORM (Cambridge University Press, 1917) Tipler, Frank: THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY (Doubleday, 1995) Ulanowicz Robert: GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (Springer-Verlag, 1986) Weber, Bruce, Depew David & Smith James: ENTROPY, INFORMATION AND EVOLUTION (MIT Press, 1988) Weismann, August: THE GERM-PLASM (Scribner's, 1893) Weiss Paul: PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPMENT (Holt, 1939) Weizsacker, Carl-Friedrich von: DIE EINHEIT DER NATUR (1971) Woltereck, Richard: GRUNDZÜGE EINER ALLGEMEINEN BIOLOGIE (1932) Wicken, Jeffrey: EVOLUTION, INFORMATION AND THERMODYNAMICS (Oxford Univ Press, 1987) Woese, Carl: THE GENETIC CODE (Harper & Row, 1967)