Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex by Harold J. Morowitz

From the Publisher

When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence. When the chemicals diffusing in the primordial waters came together to form the first living cell, that was emergence. When the activities of the neurons in the brain result in mind, that too is emergence.
In The Emergence of Everything, one of the leading scientists involved in the study of complexity, Harold J. Morowitz, takes us on a sweeping tour of the universe, a tour with 28 stops, each one highlighting a particularly important moment of emergence. For instance, Morowitz illuminates the emergence of the stars, the birth of the elements and of the periodic table, and the appearance of solar systems and planets. We look at the emergence of living cells, animals, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, leading to the great apes and the appearance of humanity. He also examines tool making, the evolution of language, the invention of agriculture and technology, and the birth of cities. And as he offers these insights into the evolutionary unfolding of our universe, our solar system, and life itself, Morowitz also seeks out the nature of God in the emergent universe, the God posited by Spinoza, Bruno, and Einstein, a God Morowitz argues we can know through a study of the laws of nature.
Written by one of our wisest scientists, The Emergence of Everything offers a fascinating new way to look at the universe and the natural world, and it makes an important contribution to the dialogue between science and religion.

Kirkus Reviews

Departing from his usual multi-subject essay form, biophysicist Morowitz (The Kindly Dr. Guillotin, 1997, etc.) makes a great leap at a theory of complexity based on "emergences." But doesn't land on his feet, instead hovering somewhere in mid-air as he envisions the next emergence as one in which humankind will take on the mantle of "the mind, the volition, and the transcendence of the immanent God." Human beings will then be obliged to create an ethics that optimizes human life and moves to the spiritual plane. If this sounds like Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), it should. Morowitz champions Teilhard as a much-ridiculed figure who tried his best to reconcile science and religion. So does Morowitz. His concept of emergences is a trendy one as the pendulum swings from the enormous successes of reductionist science (genetics; molecular biology) to attempts to explain complex "epiphenomena" like mind and consciousness. Morowitz traces the development of complexity in a series of 28 emergences from the Big Bang and star and planet formation to successive stages of evolution on Earth. Here, he goes to his habitual short-essay form, taking three or four pages to describe each emergence-for the most part very skillfully, though not without occasional lapses into technical jargon. He also indicates that selection or pruning principles must accompany emergences. This leads him to suggest that conflicts in Ireland or the Middle East may have as their basis the principle of competitive exclusion of hominids, in which two non-interbreeding populations competing for the same niche create enormous stress that ends with the elimination of one group or the creation ofisolating barriers. It's all quite glib, and Morowitz, in his final chapters, blithely summarizes Western philosophy and monotheistic religions (while admitting he has overlooked half the world) to come up with his transcendent/immanent ideas. Convincing? No. There's nothing here to contradict scientists who claim we owe our existence to chance and chance alone.

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