Beginnings:
Creativity * Belief * Evolution and Our Interconnected Universe
Specifications:
Category: Science (Innovation, Networks, Ecology and Information) and Philosophy
Hardcover, full-color dust jacket, nom. dimensions: 6" x 9"; 352 num. pp. (368 total) with
48 black and white illustrations, glossary, references/end notes and index (in outline format).
This is Book 1 of the Ecocosm Series.
Publication date: February, 2002.
Price: $34.95
ISBN 0-9711069-1-6
an Amazonian ecosystem and
a Shakespearean sonnet alike?"
"All, author Dennis Hollenberg shows us, are enlivened by the same kind of underlying activity. Exactly what sort of entities perform this activity and how they go about it are the main topics of Beginnings.
"In investigating them — which by turns leads to a vaulting new view of the world — the writer plays common notions against some very strange realities. Although many writers tell us that the world is complex, Hollenberg unshrouds complexity itself and shows how it has repeatedly bloomed.
"Beginnings also unfolds like an odyssey among many of the issues which roil our society today. Neither science disciplines, such as those of genetics and evolution, nor our more personal ideas of religion and philosophy are shielded from the intimate inquiry this perspective affords. Here are answers to questions such as, how could nineteen people so strongly cohere that they suicidally destroy thousands of innocent lives?
"As the many examples make plain, all such activites, however hidden we think thy are, derive from like processes and, therefore, submit to this elegant new tool of analysis. Beginnings connects an ancient Greek’s obscure 2500 year old musings and the perspectives of both Erasmus Darwin and his famous grandson with the elusive insights of the Nobel Prize winning geneticist, Barbara McClintock.
"Beginnings avoids the paths of crass scientism and dogma-blinded religionists. Instead, it ushers readers toward its compelling horizon with insightful asides and subtle humor. This third way reveals the hidden actions that culminate in the emergence of new ideas and life forms. All of these entities, like artistic inspiration, babies and ecosystems, involve complex systems. Aptly titled, this book is about their origins.
"Readers who enjoy surprising guides to the back roads of the universe will, in Beginnings, find their view extended at every turn. But, fair warning, accompanying the reader on this journey is the chance of being forever changed.
Here is additional description from the back ...
"Using new tools, this book cleverly joins unlikely topics to explain in simple terms the symmetry beneath the complexties that animate atoms, molecules, organisms, ecosystems, people and institutions."
It then continues:
"This entertaining book explores and celebrates the nature of innovation. It argues that, because all things we experience were once new, they must have a common essence, one that the author reduces to 'information.' Beginnings then develops a picture of this universal process and shows it to underlie all origins. The book answers why? and how? by confronting enduring issues in the biological, physical and social sciences and philosophy. Offered also are insights into slippery questions such as, what is life?
"Liberally illustrated, Beginnings' examples will appeal to a wide readership. They clarify topics such as how our minds work so flexibly, how we create new works (using recent analyses of Shakespeare's and others'), how human networks form and their ensuing tendencies, what is authority and why we conform to it, the fundamental importance of diversity, how new ideas are accepted -- or not -- by groups, the inspiring implications of life's patterns and, paradoxically, how we less-than-perfect creatures succeed.
"In summation, this engrossing work offers a new view of the universe, the definitive explanation of creativity and innovation, an outlined synthesis of the sciences and a unique, multidimensional perspective of the human condition."
Dennis Hollenberg, inventor, writer and pioneer in the field of innovation as a dynamical information process, first published his ground-breaking ideas in 1986. He and his family live on the West Coast.
