The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision

This is a refreshing look at life based on a simple premise: that life is a self-regulating network in which essential properties arise not from the constituent parts themselves, but from the configuration of relationships within the integrated system as a whole. The authors guide us through an incredible range of scientific disciplines, revealing the uncanny ramifications of this subtle change in perspective. In the systems view, the parts have no meaning as isolated entities; they are defined only by their interconnections; they are inseparable patterns within the larger web. This approach is an eye-opening contrast to the mainstream viewpoint of reductionistic analysis, and the authors explain how reductionism had shaped our culture to the detriment of the environment we cohabit. The Systems View of Life treats readers to a rational expansion of self towards unity with the fabric of life and oneness with the universe, much like the monism of Advaita Vedanta or Monistic Idealism. Every distinction we presuppose as individuals, as nations, and as a species breaks down under this unflinching scrutiny. When we let go of our individual pride, we allow room instead for inclusive cooperation. Nothing less than this kind of fundamental shift of identity will prepare us to face the multifaceted global crises we have created for the biosphere. This book exhibits the systems view of life within the context of numerous academic disciplines including: history, philosophy, economics, physics, genetics, mathematics, ecology, biology, evolution, chemistry, cognitive linguistics, spirituality, sociology, medicine, and climatology. It is written for undergraduates but approachable to casual readers willing to delve deep into several different scientific fields. It is not an easy read, nor is it short, but the vision is beautiful, and the elevated viewpoint is worth every page. My only serious critique is that the systemic solutions to our global threats proposed in the last chapter seem generally unrealistic. However, to be fair, I couldn’t do better. The very notion of “I” is an emergent property arising from the simultaneous occurrence and resonance of feelings, memories, and thoughts, so that the “I” is not localized anywhere, but rather is an organized pattern without a center. When we look at the world around us, we find that we are not thrown into chaos and randomness but are part of a great order, a grand symphony of life. Every atom in our body was once a part of previous bodies - living or nonliving - and will be a part of future bodies. In this sense, our body will not die but will live on, again and again, because life lives on. Moreover, we share not only life’s molecules, but also its basic principles of organization with the rest of the living world. And since our mind, too, is embodied, our concepts and metaphors are embedded in the web of life together with our bodies and brains. Indeed, we belong to the universe, and this experience of belonging can make our lives profoundly meaningful.”

The book was great overall and I'm in so much agreement with it's basic premise that the particular and its own particular properties need to be understood in it's relation within the whole that I can't say much more on it. But I can't get out of my mind the authors discussion of Intelligent Design. Why did they take up this argument. And why - like so many fallaciously do - did they try to push a particular philosophical perspective? Forgive me if this is not what you were interested in reading - as I said, this was a great book packed with the latest knowledge of why and how a systems view of life is fundamental - but i have to get this off my chest. When you go to the route of things, you can't actually "know" with any certainty whether there is or is not a Creator. And the idea that you can use "logic" - such as the structure defines function or vice versa isn't really useful or compelling as an argument. However things came to be as they are today, through the processes we know that work i.e evolution, we can never really know whether WE were the ones to know this. Since what are scientific facts but mental representations human beings make of some approximate cause for a natural phenomena. And what are these representations if nothing but CREATIONS of our own minds. So why are we making pronouncements about things that lie outside - fundamentally - our capacity to understand. If a Creator exists, by definition, he would be everything. All that exists. All that has existed up till the present and the future. It's simply everything. So it doesn't create any problems, at least for me, that todays reality can be appreciably explained via evolution, biology, physics, etc and yet there remains an efficient indelible mystery: did this happen by accident? Sure, some will say. Cause they WANT to believe that. For whatever developmental history that only they (and perhaps their psychoanalyst) can know, they've become inclined to an atheistic - world without a God - perspective. Nothing wrong with that. You aren't any more likely to be less moral because of it. Compassion is a personal experience. All of us are capable of the greatest wisdom, and insight if only were patient and humble enough to find it within ourselves. But how can we claim to know that the various causes that led to the creation of todays species weren't orchestrated by INTELLIGENT DESIGN to be perceived, by us, the only creature on this planet to bear witness to this wondrous reality, at this point in our history. This improbable world with laws that allow this bounty to blossom. I mean. This is how inherently sticky the question is. You can provide a perspective that may be appealing to you and others - and even me! - and yet an equally plausible, if intelligently carried out, perspective, can be crafted to support the view of an intelligent designer. So I personally HATE discussions where one party assumes the knowledge to know what is more "logical' or "scientifically valid" - as if they forgot that even science can only describe things WITHIN a system, and can't explain the origin of the system, and thus the surreal experience some people have with the facticity of Existing. Of living in a world with a specific, highly symbolic quality to it. And is this something the human being perceives, even perhaps, illusory? Yea. And so? The fact that were confronted with such a situation - which you see as "illusion" but I may find to have an ultimate, existential value - is neither for you or I to make final pronouncements about. Just accept that ultimately it is a matter of personal opinion - Affect - and that although God may exist - or may not - we should try to respect the spiritual approach that another person feel towards the world. Nothing is more alarming than when a person who claims to be spiritual is willing to shred to pieces the world view that another person has every right to hold on to - if only because it has taken on meaning, significance and homeostatic status within their organism. Me personally, I like the idea of God, though I know I can fully live without it. So, if relativity is the question - Is God necessary? - thats a personal matter for an individual to figure out for himself. For me, I WANT to make him valid, because the mystery of existence - it's awe-power - is something not only to take in spiritually and emotionally. But even something to be explored within your awareness, to be symbolized within words. I mean, don't try to take away someones right to find meaning UNIQUE to them in being alive. Don't act as if an atheistic approach is the only respectable one.

Outstanding intellectual journey of science, history and philosophy to develop the systems view of life. While the book is categorized as science oriented given the authors' physics and cell biology backgrounds, the Systems View of Life is so much more than science. The underlying theories apply to all aspects of planetary activity such as law, economics, society, government etc. The essence of the book is the disconnect between the non-linear planetary processes based on relationships, forms, feed back loops and our linear models that stem from a mechanistic and material world view. This disconnect explains why humanity faces so many ecological and social problems. We see ourselves as independent from nature and act accordingly, yet we have created a economic system that is destroying the life giving features of this planet. The book provides the historical development from Newtonian mechanistic thinking to an evolving holistic approach and how that transition occurred. Even if you don't have a science background the authors present the material in a coherent way. This is a must read if you are interested in complexity and systems theory or if you are looking at issues of sustainability.

Best buy

Deep yet very important if interested in understanding the theory of everything!

I'm a geek, and read science for pleasure and edification. I don't care for the chatty type that tend to hit the best seller list. I've never learned about the systems view, and this book lays it out well for an educated layperson. I can't read it before bed; I have to be more alert to follow it. But it's great company whilst I eat lunch. Lots of information, and doesn't repeat itself.

Having been blown away by The Web of Life so many years ago, I was eager to grab this one. And only 150 pages into it, I am chewing it up like a Christmas feast. One of the most remarkable features of Capra's work is his ability to summarize bodies of knowledge, disciplines and schools, and deal with them chronologically while painting a panoramic view over thousands of years of scientific study. He can then swoop into the core of any science in question and capture its essence in only a few pages or even a few paragraphs. The book is coherent, extremely well organized, and very well written. A delight to read.

Fritjof Capra has been a consistently interesting and deservedly popular thinker for many years now. I have always been impressed by the clarity and economy with which he has been able to communicate complex ideas, often in considerable depth, to a general audience. Equally, I have always been impressed by the breadth of his intellectual interests and his rare ability to combine these wide-ranging interests into coherent and far-reaching syntheses. Now, together with his co-author Pier Luigi Luisi, who has himself made significant contributions to the discussion of the emergence of life (see, e.g., Luisi's The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology ), Capra and Luisi have outdone themselves. Their 500 page book The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (with many words per page, given its large-page format) is, purely and simply, a magnum opus, it really is. It surely represents the culminating statement of Capra and his co-author's work over several decades now on the development of a scientifically-informed unified vision of the world that incorporates and integrates the biological, ecological, cognitive, philosophical, social, political, and even the spiritual dimensions of life. The last time I read such an all-embracing, well-informed, and richly rewarding synthesis as this was when I read Charles Birch and John Cobb's The Liberation of Life : From the Cell to the Community (also from Cambridge University Press) - and that was published back in 1981! If you want to understand the major cultural shift that we have been undergoing over the last several hundred years (right across the physical, life, and social sciences) from a mechanistic worldview to the emergence of what the authors term a 'systems' worldview - a worldview that sees the world around us in terms of networks, patterns, and complex, mutually interacting, living or life-like systems rather than in terms of discrete building blocks that interact in linear, sequential ways that are open to precise forms of prediction and control - then this is now THE book to read. As the authors show, this shift in worldview has major implications for almost everything that ought to matter to us - from the very practical ways in which we need to attend to the manifold problems that are pressing in upon us in the ecological and socio-political realms to the ways in which we can find an approach to our inner, spiritual lives that is consistent with our best scientific understandings. You get the idea. I cannot praise this book enough. Capra and Luisi have done us all a great service. I cannot see how anyone could spend even just a few hours with this book and not come away considerably the richer for it. Spend considerably longer with it and you will undoubtedly come away knowing a lot more about various areas of interest to you than you do now - not to mention more inspired to work for changes in directions that will enable us to sustain the web of life on this planet. Every critically-minded reader will find their own quibbles here and there of course, but c'mon ... the comprehensive breadth and depth of scholarship displayed in this book, all communicated clearly and economically (often with aid of pictures, inset boxes, and diagrams), is simply outstanding. Warwick Fox - author of Toward a Transpersonal Ecology: Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism , A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment , and On Beautiful Days Such as This: A philosopher sings the blues and restores his soul in Greece .

Not through the entire book yet. But: Very well written, well structured. The idea of connectedness is delivered and argued from various angles. A really very good read. Looking forward to continuing. And possibly re-reading from time to time.

It's a good and original book but it should contain a detailed description of the limitations of the presented theory. Paper and volume overall quality is poor and could be improved.

The Introduction alone will change your view of man and the universe. This book is so critical to our future survival and how we progress as society. I cannot recommend this any higher than a must read for everyone!