Bernd-Olaf Küppers Book order

In this thought-provoking book Küppers, an internationally renowned physicist, philosopher and theoretical biologist, addresses a number of science's deepest questions: Can physics advance to the origin of all things and explain the unique phenomena of life, time and history? Are there unsolvable enigmas of the world? How did life originate? Is language a general phenomenon of Nature? What is time? Is it possible to express the history of the world in formulae? Where is science leading us? These and other provocative questions essential for a deeper understanding of the world are treated here in a refreshing and stimulating manner.

Complex systems in nature and society make use of information for the development of their internal organization and the control of their functional mechanisms. Alongside technical aspects of storing, transmitting and processing information, the various semantic aspects of information, such as meaning, sense, reference and function, play a decisive part in the analysis of such systems. With the aim of fostering a better understanding of semantic systems from an evolutionary and multidisciplinary perspective, this volume collects contributions by philosophers and natural scientists, linguists, information and computer scientists. They do not follow a single research paradigm; rather they shed, in a complementary way, new light upon some of the most important aspects of the evolution of semantic systems. Evolution of Semantic Systems is intended for researchers in philosophy, computer science, and the natural sciences who work on the analysis or development of semantic systems, ontologies, or similar complex information structures. In the eleven chapters, they will find a broad discussion of topics ranging from underlying universal principles to representation and processing aspects to paradigmatic examples.

The relationship between law and chance in the early evolution of life is the guidingtheme of this provocative study. The author explores modern ideas about the origin of life from thestandpoint of philosophy of science, emphasizing the contribution made by information theory.Küppersasserts that all life phenomena are steered by information and that this information is alreadydefined materially in a universal form at the level of the biological macromolecule. The question ofthe origin of life turns out to be the question of the origin of biological informationInformationand the Origin of Life takes up the fundamental problems of whether and, if so, to what extent theorigin of semantic information during evolution can be explained as a general phenomenon within theframework of physics and chemistry. The results could have far-reaching consequences for such fieldsas the philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence.Bernd-Olaf Küppers has long focused hisattention on basic questions of natural science and the philosophy of science at the borders ofphysics, chemistry, and biology. He has been engaged since 1971 in research at the Max PlanckInstitute for Biophysical Chemistry, and from 1979 to 1984 he held lecture courses in philosophy atthe University of Göttingen