The Systems View of Life

Fritjof Capra is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, and serves on the faculty of Schumacher College, Devon. He is a physicist and systems theorist, and has been engaged in a systematic examination of the philosophical and social implications of contemporary science for the past 35 years. Pier Luigi Luisi is Professor in Biochemistry at the University of Rome 3. He started his career at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) where he became full professor in Chemistry and initiated the interdisciplinary Cortona Weeks. His main research focuses on the experimental, theoretical and philosophical aspects of the origin of life and self-organisation of synthetic and natural systems.

• Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: paradigms in science and society; Part I. The Mechanistic World View: 1. The Newtonian world-machine; 2. The mechanistic view of life; 3. Mechanistic social thought; Part II. The Rise of Systems Thinking: 4. From the parts to the whole; 5. Classical systems theories; 6. Complexity theory; Part III. A New Conception of Life: 7. What is life?; 8. Order and complexity in the living world; 9. Darwin and biological evolution; 10. The quest for the origin of life on Earth; 11. The human adventure; 12. Mind and consciousness; 13. Science and spirituality; 14. Life, mind, and society; 15. The systems view of health; Part IV. Sustaining the Web of Life: 16. The ecological dimension of life; 17. Connecting the dots: systems thinking and the state of the world; 18. Systemic solutions; Bibliography; Index.

'Partly an enjoyable survey of exciting new developments in systems biology, valuable to any student of biology or science, and partly a bold blueprint for how we might preserve our future on Earth.' New Scientist