From Electrons to Elephants and Elections Book Reviews

From Electrons to Elephants and Elections by Shyam Wuppuluri & Ian Stewart Book Summary

This highly interdisciplinary book, covering more than six fields, from philosophy and sciences all the way up to the humanities and with contributions from eminent authors, addresses the interplay between content and context, reductionism and holism and their meeting point: the notion of emergence. Much of today’s science is reductionist (bottom-up); in other words, behaviour on one level is explained by reducing it to components on a lower level. Chemistry is reduced to atoms, ecosystems are explained in terms of DNA and proteins, etc. This approach fails quickly since we can’t cannot extrapolate to the properties of atoms solely from Schrödinger's equation, nor figure out protein folding from an amino acid sequence or obtain the phenotype of an organism from its genotype. An alternative approach to this is holism (top-down). Consider an ecosystem or an organism as a whole: seek patterns on the same scale. Model a galaxy not as 400 billion-point masses (stars) but as an object in its own right with its own properties (spiral, elliptic). Or a hurricane as a structured form of moist air and water vapour. Reductionism is largely about content, whereas holistic models are more attuned to context. Reductionism (content) and holism (context) are not opposing philosophies — in fact, they work best in tandem. Join us on a journey to understand the multifaceted dialectic concerning this duo and how they shape the foundations of sciences and humanities, our thoughts and, the very nature of reality itself.

👋 Do you love From Electrons to Elephants and Elections books? Please share your friends!

From Electrons to Elephants and Elections (Shyam Wuppuluri & Ian Stewart) Book Reviews 2024

Shyam Wuppuluri & Ian Stewart - From Electrons to Elephants and Elections Discussions & Comments

Have you read this book yet? What do you think about From Electrons to Elephants and Elections by Shyam Wuppuluri & Ian Stewart book? Ask the bookpedia.co community a question about From Electrons to Elephants and Elections!