This book introduces the elements of a new evolutionary approach to physics. Based on intuition, this concept was originated by the late Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine.The text will appeal to both technical and graduate audiences as well as general readers. It deals with the following topics: Epistemological Basis of Evolutionary Thermodynamics; Far From Equilibrium - Thermodynamics and Irreversibility; The Concept of Negentropy (From Boltzman to Szent-György, Through Schrödinger's "What's Life"); Energy Versus Entropy; Is Entropy Always a Function State? The Arrow of Time and the Role of Events in an Evolutionary Physical-Chemistry; First and Second Principles of Thermodynamics Revisited; Introduction to Ecodynamics - Fundamental Principles; A Physics for Biosystems and Ecosystems - Cross-Fertilization Between Evolutionary Thermodynamics and Systems Ecology; The Supramolecular Structure of Water - A Magnetic Resonance Approach; Nuclear Spin Relaxation Times; Dissipative Structures in Nature - The Bat's Case (Biodiversity and Strange Attractors); Application of Ecodynamic Models to Sustainable Development; Biosphere Global Ecodynamic Models; and Dissipative Structures and Design.

Eigen shows that life on Earth is the inevitable result of certain chance events that took place in the unique history of our planet. He introduces how to interpret the molecular 'fossil record'. Part one are ideas that are justified scientifically. Part two shows important biological ideas and the final section summarizes developments in molecular biology.

In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the constructal law, accounts for the evolution of these and many other designs in our world. Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current—of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical “flowcharts” or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies. All are governed by the same principle, known as the constructal law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.

"Sidelights on Relativity" by Albert Einstein is a compilation of two lectures Einstein gave about the theory of relativity. First starting with the way in which physics came about to become a fully defined field of study, to how math has helped create a framework for understanding the world, this book is a comprehensive book about how the study of relativity. Written in an easy-to-understand manner, this book continues to be an essential part of scientific studies around the world.

An empowering new view of the nature of physics and the constant evolution of our physical and social world

A New Ecology: Systems Perspective, Second Edition, gives an overview of the commonalities of all ecosystems from a variety of properties, including physical openness, ontic openness, directionality, connectivity, a complex dynamic for growth and development, and a complex dynamic response to disturbances. Each chapter details basic and characteristic properties that help the reader understand how they can be applied to explain a wide spectrum of current ecological research and environmental management applications. - Contains revised, updated or redeveloped chapters that include the most current research and technology - Reviews universal traits of ecosystems from multiple perspectives, giving the reader a complete overview of the systems perspective of ecology - Offers broad examples of ecology as a systems science, from the history of science, to philosophy and the arts - Brings together the systems perspective in a framework of four columns for greater understanding, including thermodynamics, network theory, hierarchy theory and biochemistry - Contains new chapter on the application of the theory to environmental management

How did life start? Is the evolution of life describable by any physics-like laws? Stuart Kauffman's latest book offers an explanation-beyond what the laws of physics can explain-of the progression from a complex chemical environment to molecular reproduction, metabolism and to early protocells, and further evolution to what we recognize as life. Among the estimated one hundred billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere. Building on concepts from his work as a complex systems researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, Kauffman focuses in particular on the idea of cells constructing themselves and introduces concepts such as "constraint closure." Living systems are defined by the concept of "organization" which has not been focused on in enough in previous works. Cells are autopoetic systems that build themselves: they literally construct their own constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom that constitutes the very thermodynamic work by which they build their own self creating constraints. Living cells are "machines" that construct and assemble their own working parts. The emergence of such systems-the origin of life problem-was probably a spontaneous phase transition to self-reproduction in complex enough prebiotic systems. The resulting protocells were capable of Darwin's heritable variation, hence open-ended evolution by natural selection. Evolution propagates this burgeoning organization. Evolving living creatures, by existing, create new niches into which yet further new creatures can emerge. If life is abundant in the universe, this self-constructing, propagating, exploding diversity takes us beyond physics to biospheres everywhere.

The present volume is the sixth issue of the ‘Evolution’ Yearbook series. Our Yearbooks are designed to present to its readers the widest possible spectrum of subjects and issues: from universal evolutionism to the analysis of particular evolutionary regularities in the development of biological, abiotic, and social systems, culture, cognition, language, etc. The main objective of our Yearbook is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research, within which scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. Global evolution (in connection with the Big History) becomes the main subject of our Yearbook. We strive to arrange each issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. Similar to the previous issues, this Yearbook shows some aspects of the evolutionary advance from the earlier phases to the anticipated future of human society. But on the whole, this volume is devoted to different aspects and facts of megaevolution and some universal theories in an attempt to find common ground in the diversity of manifestation of evolution and its forms at different stages of development. The title of this issue ‘Evolutionary Trends, Aspects, and Patterns’ is fully justified. The volume consists of four sections: Big History's Phases and Long-Term Trends; Cosmic Evolution; The Aspects of Socio-Cultural and Political Evolution; and Looking from the Past into the Future. As before, we strive to arrange every issue in such a way that the line from cosmic evolution to the human future is evident. Megahistory and global evolution still are the main subjects of our Yearbook. This Yearbook will be useful both for those who study interdisciplinary macroproblems and for specialists working in focused directions, as well as for those who are interested in evolutionary issues of Cosmology, Biology, History, Anthropology, Economics and other areas of study. More than that, this edition will challenge and excite your vision of your own life and the new discoveries going on around us.

Marrying physics and biology, McFadden theorizes that evolution may not be random but directed, and that quantum mechanics endows living organisms with the ability to initiate specific actions, including new mutations. Illustrations.

Now in its third edition the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology serves as the key to a common understanding in the extremely interdisciplinary community of astrobiologists. Each new or experienced researcher and graduate student in adjacent fields of astrobiology will appreciate this reference work in the quest to understand the big picture. The carefully selected group of active researchers contributing to this work are aiming to give a comprehensive international perspective on and to accelerate the interdisciplinary advance of astrobiology. The interdisciplinary field of astrobiology constitutes a joint arena where provocative discoveries are coalescing concerning, e.g. the prevalence of exoplanets, the diversity and hardiness of life, and its chances for emergence. Biologists, astrophysicists, (bio)-chemists, geoscientists and space scientists share this exciting mission of revealing the origin and commonality of life in the Universe. With its overview articles and its definitions the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology not only provides a common language and understanding for the members of the different disciplines but also serves for educating a new generation of young astrobiologists who are no longer separated by the jargon of individual scientific disciplines. This new edition offers ~170 new entries. More than half of the existing entries were updated, expanded or supplemented with figures supporting the understanding of the text. Especially in the fields of astrochemistry and terrestrial extremophiles but also in exoplanets and space sciences in general there is a huge body of new results that have been taken into account in this new edition. Because the entries in the Encyclopedia are in alphabetical order without regard for scientific field, this edition includes a section “Astrobiology by Discipline” which lists the entries by scientific field and subfield. This should be particularly helpful to those enquiring about astrobiology, as it illustrates the broad and detailed nature of the field.