Books

Short works

Books : reviews

Steen Rasmussen, Mark A. Bedau, Liaohai Chen, David W. Deamer, David C. Krakauer, Norman H. Packard, Peter F. Stadler.
Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter.
MIT Press. 2009

Protocells offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials; the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters by experts in the field put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations on the components and properties of protocells. The book also provides perspectives on research in related areas and such broader societal issues as commercial applications and ethical considerations.

The book covers all major scientific approaches to creating minimal life, both in the laboratory and in simulation. It emphasizes the bottom-up view of physicists, chemists, and material scientists but also includes the molecular biologists top-down approach and the origin-of-ljfe perspective. Ihe capacity to engineer living technology could have a enormous socio-economic impact and could bring both good and ill. Protocells promises to be the essential reference for research on bottom-up assembly of life and living technology for years to come.

David C. Krakauer.
Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight: the evolving idea of complexity at the Santa Fe Institute 1984-2019.
SFI Press. 2019

Over the last three decades, the Santa Fe Institute and its network of researchers have been pursuing a revolution in science. Ignoring the boundaries of disciplines and schools and searching for novel fundamental ideas, theories, and practices, this international community integrates the full range of scientific inquiries that will help us to understand and survive on a complex planet.

This volume collects essays from the past thirty years of research, in which contributors explain in clear and accessible language many of the deepest challenges and insights of complexity science.