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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 215
EAN: 9780465003006
ISBN: 0465003001
Label: Basic Books
Manufacturer: Basic Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: May 05, 2008
Publisher: Basic Books
Sales Rank: 7371
Studio: Basic Books
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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.
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Sacred!!
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.
Rating: - Élan vital redux
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 ... Read More
Rating: - A Beautiful Book, But Missing Just One Thing
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Can an Immanent God be Sacred?
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Some frontier science with a goodwill message
"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." ... Read More
Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion |
