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The Rise of Complexity in Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2017

Eric J. Chaisson*
Affiliation:
Wright Center for Science Education Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155 USA, USA Email: [email protected] URL: www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center

Abstract

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Cosmic evolution-change, broadly construed-has become a powerful unifying factor in all of science, underlying the rise of complexity throughout Nature writ large. That complexity can be defined and quantified for a whole hierarchy of ordered structures by examining the rate at which normalized energy flows through open, non-equilibrium, thermodynamic systems, from quark to quasar, microbe to mind.

Type
Education and Outreach
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2004 

References

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Chaisson, E. J. 2001, Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, (London: Harvard University Press Cambridge)CrossRefGoogle Scholar