Thursday 22 January 2015

Darwin Does Physics is now widely available

Darwin Does Physics - by John Campbell - is now widely available.

The blurb reads:

A largely unnoticed scientific revolution has occurred over the past forty-five years. The Darwinian paradigm has been successfully applied to numerous fields outside of biology: including the Social Sciences, the Behavioural Sciences and most recently to the Physical Sciences and even to Physics itself. This revolution promises an unprecedented conceptual unification of the many branches of science. Darwin Does Physics argues that the extension of the Darwinian paradigm has proceeded in parallel with a more widely recognized scientific revolution concerning the fundamental importance of information throughout science. Information is seen to enter nature in the form of ‘inferential systems’ which accumulate knowledge required for existence. Darwinian processes are identified as the physical implementation of inferential systems. The theoretical paradigms of physics have struggled over the past hundred years to accommodate the massive increase in scope of the known universe which Physics’ must explain. The Newtonian paradigm, which includes most of its modern theoretical structures such as string theory, has been found wanting. In an attempt to circumvent these problems some physicists are now developing theories in the Darwinian paradigm to explain the most basic processes of physics. These theories are explained and suggestions made for their development. If Darwinian theories are proved successful in explaining even the fundamental physical mysteries science will have achieved a wondrous unification of its many diverse branches.
John Campbell previously wrote the generally excellent book Universal Darwinism. Darwin Does Physics looks set to be a small step for John Campbell but a large leap for most of the rest of the evolution comminity. Let's hope that some people actually read it.

John has posted an excerpt on his blog: Bayesian and Frequentist probability.

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