“It would be a triumph to find universal laws of organization for life, ecosystems, and biospheres. The candidate criticality law is emergent and not reducible to physics alone.”

—  Stuart Kauffman

Stuart A. Kauffman (2010) Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. p.40

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It would be a triumph to find universal laws of organization for life, ecosystems, and biospheres. The candidate critic…" by Stuart Kauffman?
Stuart Kauffman photo
Stuart Kauffman 14
American biophysicist 1939

Related quotes

Narendra Modi photo

“The law of nature is that Truth alone triumphs—Satyameva Jayate.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Our judiciary having spoken, I felt it important to share my inner thoughts and feelings with the nation at large.
2013, "Satyameva Jayate: Truth Alone Triumphs", 2013

Ian McDonald photo

“The laws of economics are subject to the laws of physics. The physical processes that govern this planet and the continued life upon it place as stringent an upper limit on economic growth as the speed of light does on our knowledge of the universe.”

Ian McDonald book River of Gods

Source: River of Gods (2006), Ch. 9 (p. 93).

Stephen Hawking photo

“We shouldn't be surprised that conditions in the universe are suitable for life, but this is not evidence that the universe was designed to allow for life. We could call order by the name of God, but it would be an impersonal God. There's not much personal about the laws of physics.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Quoted in "Leaping the Abyss" (April 2002) by Gregory Benford, in Reason Magazine http://reason.com/archives/2002/04/01/leaping-the-abyss/4

Kip S. Thorne photo

“Simplicity is the touchstone in finding new physical laws.”

Kip S. Thorne (1940) American physicist

in Does Physical Reality Go Beyond? http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Does-Physical-Reality-Go-Beyond-Kip-Thorne-/106, Closer to Truth TV series.
Context: Simplicity is the touchstone in finding new physical laws. … If it's elegant, then it's a rough rule of thumb: you're on the right track.

Erwin Schrödinger photo

“We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics. For that is just what is to be expected from the knowledge we have gained of the structure of living matter. We must also be prepared to find a new type of physical law prevailing in it. Or are we to term it a non-physical, not to say a super-physical, law?”

Erwin Schrödinger book What Is Life?

What Is Life? (1944)

John D. Barrow photo

“Einstein showed us how to find all the possible universes that were consistent with the laws of physics and the character of gravity, how to reconstruct their pasts and predict their futures. But actually finding them was no easy task.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

Preface
The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)

Ilya Prigogine photo

“We have seen that the formation and maintenance of self-organizing systems are compatible with the laws of physical chemistry.”

Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) physical chemist

Part 2; Cited in: Evgenii Rudnyi (2013).
Thermodynamics of Evolution (1972)

“The social world is not driven by natural laws and randomness alone, as the physical world is, but also by human wills.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 8, The End of Nature, p. 162.

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

3.0321
Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

“Human communities are ecosystems. Ecosystems are biological, chemical and physical systems. The physics, chemistry and biology of complex self-organizing systems can tell us much that is useful about human communities: about the conditions necessary for the existence of human communities, about the properties human communities 'inherit' because they are special cases of more general kinds of systems, particularly ecosystems.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 159

Related topics