1957, strategists in military think tanks began using his game theory to analyze

50 percent of today's species are parasitic. (The figure has risen from the deep

a 1958 paper by C. J. Mode in the journal Evolution. It was called "coevolution,"

aberrant levels. Both oxygen and methane coexist, yet they are profoundly

A billion years from now life on Earth may be primarily social, and stuffed with

a cause and an effect.

accidental development on the terrestrial surface. Rather, it is intimately

according to various reward schemes, weighing immediate sure gain over future

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

action shows itself in the finite speed of light, in the inverse square law of

actually creates long-term stability in coevolutionary worlds by allowing some

actually tried it.

a cultural mirror that encourages wild fluctuations in the hopes of selling many

adaptation than a true chameleon. (A true chameleon may cost several hundred

adapting to meet one's needs. Coevolution, the larger view, is adapting to meet

a different structure of rewards for winning, losing, or drawing. The four simple

against the interests of either predator or prey to eliminate the enemy." That is

agents playing Prisoner's Dilemma not only reenacted the ecological oscillations

air, as it is on other planets. In addition to its atmosphere, the temperature and

A little noticed but central character of such vivisystems is that this

alkalinity of the Earth's surface also exhibits a queer level. The entire surface

all members. Axelrod told me, "One of the earliest and most important insights

almost insolvable in theory. As an answer he came up with a theory of games.

alone. They live in a world that is the breath and bones of their ancestors and

also becomes part of the planetary life. Jonathan Weiner writing in The Next One

also works, for the participants in coevolution are both learning and teaching

Although I performed this experiment, I place very little confidence in my own

altogether.

altruism, whatever the tone of economics. But the democracies of the West,

always try to hide your strategy," says Axelrod. "But in nonzero-sum games you

a mirror.

and glass become one system. "Lizardness" and "mirrorness" are encompassed into a

and hare populations rise and fall over the years in coevolutionary circularity.

and minerals as slow life. They could only be opposite sides of a single coin. The

and plants that existed within these areas of the Earth's surface."

and that the biosphere seemed to be self-governed, but Vernadsky didn't press

and win-win cooperation. In this Era, openness wins, central control is lost, and

an effect should be traced back in a relay of hops until one reached the Prime

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, A - L

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, M - Z

anole's universe, a disturbance I could not circumvent.

another.

any planet that has life would reveal a chemistry that held odd imbalances. A

A pair of coevolutionary creatures chasing each other in an escalating arms race

apparatus. In one easy word, a solid planet became "the largest manifestation of

applying the label of life. After all, cells are mostly chemical cycles. Some

a primitive mind, must watch itself. Must any consciousness stare at its own

are now crossing. In a virtual cyclotron, learning is being smashed into its

artificial worlds ripe for emergent coevolution, spontaneous self-organization,

as an indirect coevolutionary agent to some degree. Since all organisms adapt that

ASCII) and the rise of the Internet, the largest working anarchy in the world,

as far as most skeptics are concerned, is that it makes a dead planet into a

as in "A mathematical model for the co-evolution of obligate parasites and their

assembled (and often self-assembled) into something that surges and quivers.

a state of permanent almost-fell.

as the Iterated Prisoner Dilemma-the dynamics of the game shifted. The other

a system in which small populations of programs played randomly generated

at an equilibrium determined by the pull of the creature's many extremes in color.

at many levels to birth a self-organizing structure. Sort of cooperation whether

atmosphere acts not merely as an acrobat on a tightrope pitched far from the

atmosphere, and thereby determine its composition. The makeup of the bubble of

atmosphere should fall, but for millions of years it doesn't. Since high oxygen

atmosphere should fall quickly as the gas oxidizes surface solids. Other reactive

atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far

at the moment he entered the mirror domain."

At the same time, the exchange-whether of insults or assistance or plain

At the same time, Vernadsky enraged geologists by considering rocks as if they

authentic chameleon and many more controls than I had. But I doubt it. True

author of Prisoner's Dilemma, "That's a very bizarre idea. You can't win a chess

away 10,000 tanks, and that made it harder for US and Europe to have a big

Axelrod makes an analogy with a hospital: "On average you can expect a new medical

Axelrod noticed that the champion Tit-For-Tat strategy always won without

Axelrod's 14-player Prisoner's Dilemma round robin tournament was played on a

back into the atmosphere when heated and pressed by volcanic activity.

back to a balanced rest. The chemistry of Mars and Venus was as balanced as the

bacteria create metallic ores. (Iron, the very emblem of nonlife, born of life!)

bacteria, or fungi spores; and so snow may be largely life-triggered. Only very

balance perfecting a skill or trait (building up legs to run faster) against

barren outside of Earth.

based on his telescopic analysis of other planets. Lovelock observed, "In no way

Bateson felt the system-perhaps like self-consciousness-would quickly settle out

Bateson his fine riddle of the chameleon on the mirror, and the two biologists

Bateson was tickled by the depth of the chameleon riddle and passed it on to his

became, What were the strategies of play for the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma that

because they maintain a precarious state far from equilibrium. Compared to the

becomes for them to let go, until the whole butterfly/milkweed thing emerges as

becoming a symbiont company dependent upon a single customer-company, or a single

been around for 20 years, this was the first time, as far as I know, anyone had

beginning with the American and French Revolutions, suggested that societies with

benign central authority. Without top-down government, Hobbes claimed, there would

be only collective selfishness. A strong hand had to bring forth political

between almost complete ventilation of the oceans without incurring greater risks

between the spaces of communication networks are coworlds. Marshall McLuhan was

beyond those of its constituent part." Lovelock called this view Gaia. Together

big blips no splashes. It is as if the filters of distance and time were subverted

billions of years old, this odd state of discordant harmony has been quite

bills, grades, pay stubs, and catalogs helps us create our individual identity.

binding too tightly into runaway death spirals, and therefore error keeps a

biological symbionts. As study of this simple game progressed, the larger question

biologist. Ehrlich too was fascinated by the rubbery chameleon-on-the-mirror

biologists asked NASA to shoot a couple of unmanned probes towards the two

"biosphere," (although Eduard Suess had coined the term a few years earlier) and

blue sphere under the stark light, inhaling energy, regulating its internal

boringly predictable as Mars and Venus. But as long as the distributed hand of

both a game and a type of coevolution.

both go free. But if only one should confess, he is rewarded while the other is

Brand picked up the term and launched a magazine called CoEvolution Quarterly. It

bunch of hunters who must cooperate to kill a stag, but may do better sneaking off

business world now recognize that in the era of networks and alliances, companies

But if Earth is reduced to the size of a bacteria, and inspected under

But learning is overrated as something difficult to evolve. This may have to do

butterflies in the larvae stage chomp on only one specific plant. Monarch

But the Earth has the self of a thermostat. A spontaneous circuit, provided by the

But they are still living organisms.

But when there are no hares, the foxes starve. When there are less foxes, the

by the complex connecting of everything to everything.

by their presence."

by themselves to hunt a rabbit if no one cooperates. Do they gamble on cooperation

calculations of their reactions as if the planet were a large flask of matter.

can make billions without beating others. Win-win, the cliché is called.

can only seem to veer out of control. Likewise, a pair of cozy coevolutionary

can't budge from its color unless a change is induced from outside or from an

Carbon dioxide is inexplicably a mere trace gas when it should be the bulk of the

career. He filmed Balinese dance in Indonesia; he studied dolphins; he developed a

catalogued four basic varieties of mutual second-guessing games. Each variety had

caterpillars, for instance, devour only milkweeds. And, it seemed, the milkweed

Cause. That backward path is the foundation of Western, linear logic. The

ceaseless crazed ballet they move far beyond the forms they would have if they

central property of life is not reproductive invariance, but reproductive

chain of being, but by a field of causes reflecting, bending, mirroring each other

chameleon, but an anole, a species with a far more limited range of color

chameleon is probably so tight and immediate that almost no adaptation is

chameleon-on-a-mirror loops, if it is applied as a perfectly pure rule that you

chameleons are full-bodied animals just as anoles are, with more than one reason

Chapter 10: INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY

Chapter 11: NETWORK ECONOMICS

Chapter 12: E-MONEY

Chapter 13: GOD GAMES

Chapter 14: IN THE LIBRARY OF FORM

Chapter 15: ARTIFICIAL EVOLUTION

Chapter 16: THE FUTURE OF CONTROL

Chapter 17: AN OPEN UNIVERSE

Chapter 18: THE STRUCTURE OF ORGANIZED CHANGE

Chapter 19: POSTDARWINISM

Chapter 1: THE MADE AND THE BORN

Chapter 20: THE BUTTERFLY SLEEPS

Chapter 21: RISING FLOW

Chapter 22: PREDICTION MACHINERY

Chapter 23: WHOLES, HOLES, AND SPACES

Chapter 24: THE NINE LAWS OF GOD

Chapter 2: HIVE MIND

Chapter 3: MACHINES WITH AN ATTITUDE

Chapter 4: ASSEMBLING COMPLEXITY

Chapter 5: COEVOLUTION

Chapter 5: COEVOLUTION

Chapter 6: THE NATURAL FLUX

Chapter 7: EMERGENCE OF CONTROL

Chapter 8: CLOSED SYSTEMS

Chapter 9: POP GOES THE BIOSPHERE

characteristics. It is a vivisystem. It is a system that is alive, whether or not

Cheaper than printing it out: buy the paperback book.

chemical storage units for the massive flow of minerals around the world. "Living

Chemistry and coevolution. When the compounds in the Martian atmosphere and soil

Chicken is the game played by teenage daredevils. Two cars race toward a cliff's

clear all of memory. A single instruction can stop the machine. In computation

clearly irrational, yet that is clearly a force that drives nature.

clear to everyone that Mars was indeed as dead as Lovelock had forecasted.

codependency. But even though one side gains at the expense of the other, both

coevolutionary cooperation.

coevolutionary fashion, coevolution breeds coevolution.

coevolutionary games we'll see.

coevolutionary. In fact, any organism that adapts to organisms around it will act

coevolutionary insight, says Axelrod. "He saw that the Soviets could get more

coevolutionary life generates, and that Lovelock seeks as an acid test for its

coevolutionary relationship of political enemies, business competitors, or

Coevolutionary relationships, from parasites to allies, are in their essence

coevolutionary system afloat and moving forward. Honor thy error.

coevolutionary tangle of life, which guides the chemicals of the planet toward

coevolutionary worlds control and secrecy are counterproductive. You can't

Coevolution can be seen as two parties snared in the web of mutual propaganda.

Coevolution is a variety of learning. Stewart Brand wrote in CoEvolution

coevolution pushing two competitors into "obligate cooperation." He wrote, "It's

coevolution run for up to 30,000 generations. Lindgren found that masses of dumb

coevolution-whether of mutual enemies or mutual partners-cannot only raise an

coexistence between species, as if they were an ecology. Lindgren's work excited

Colearning might be a better term for what coevolving creatures do. Coteaching

collapse of Soviet command-style economies, we know that open information keeps an

colors fluctuating chaotically in a random, psychedelic paisley.

commonly settle down to a definite price, rather than spiral on forever. Even in a

complete seriousness that "the air we breathe, the oceans, and the rocks are all

complex chemical pathways. If a thermostat or a steam engine can own

complexity investigators have recognized that persistent almost-fell is a hallmark

compromise upon a "middle value," as if it were a democracy voting. On the other

computation, exhibits a nonlinear causality field. He wrote:

computer. In 1987, Axelrod extended the computerization of the game by setting up

Computer scientist Danny Hillis has noted that computation, particularly networked

COMPUTER SCIENTIST MARVIN MINSKY: It might have a number of eigenvalues or colors,

confess to a crime. If both confess, each will be fined. If neither confesses,

conflicting interests would quickly settle on a price that was fairly stable.

conflict of interests resolved by the accumulative choices players make while

considered in the long view, the environment is the organism and the organism is

consider the Earth's landscape would retreat. "Life is not an external and

constant imperfection. Ecology maintains. Coevolution learns."

constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth's

contained by the Martian gravity, they settled into a dynamic equilibrium after

continue...

contraption that would, upon landing, be sprinkled with a planet's soil and check

control and purpose are purely logical processes that can emerge in any

control, and revelation works better than concealment. "In zero-sum games you

control. Cooperation can emerge out of self-interest. In our postindustrial

Control is not only distributed in space, but it is also blurred in time as well.

cooperate now in order to ensure cooperation from others later. This glimpse of

cooperation" between two superpower enemies. Gorbachev had a fundamental

cooperation helps the world avoid conflict. If you read the citation which the

cooperation set Axelrod on this quest: "Under what conditions will cooperation

"cooperation without friendship or foresight"-cold principles of nature that work

could be critiqued on scientific terms. Lovelock says, "The Gaia theory is a bit

could then generate each of the chameleon-on-the-mirror scenarios mentioned above.

creatures as a large chemical factory. Plants and animals were mere temporary

creatures making similar tradeoffs, it becomes a coevolutionary game.

creatures, then the web of coevolution spread around until it closed a circuit of

curious accumulative effects of coevolution.

cybernetic holism. Brand published his chameleon koan in his Whole Earth Catalog,

cybernetician interested in how machines could learn, wrote, "[An organism's

daily dilemma is labeled the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation.

dancing mirror.

Darwin, was the true discoverer of evolution, but Lamarck is stuck with an

David Layzer, writing in his semiscientific book Cosmogenesis, argues that "the

Dead planets find equilibrium by geological circuits. Gases, such as carbon

decrease with the distance in time or in space between them. This allows us to

defection for defection, and tended to engender periods of cooperation. Axelrod

defending itself so thoroughly against the monarch, the milkweed became

denominator-a middle average consumer? Or does he oscillate in mad swings of

deposits eventually become pressed under sedimentary weight into stone. Tiny plant

developed programmable logic for a computer in the early 1940s, and along with

device has been a harder idea to swallow. Vernadsky came very close to Lovelock's

different "species" of strategy was very stable. These historical epochs were

dioxide, dissolve in liquids and can precipitate out as solids. Only so much gas

dipstick into their soil to check for vital signs.

direct symbiosis to indirect mutual influence. The force of coevolutionism flows

disappear in a universe of itself would endlessly cycle through a number of its

disguises."

dissolved in sea water to produce a salt which settles on the sea floor. The

disturb it anew. Could it ever settle into a pattern persistent enough to call it

does he think I will offer, how much less than what I am willing to pay should I

doing terribly."

dollars and requires a terrarium of a quality I did not want to possess.) More

do organisms simply 'adapt' to a dead world determined by physics and chemistry

drug to have a lower payoff than exploiting an established medication to its

dynamics than Vernadsky did. As a biologist, Lamarck was equal to Darwin. He, not

each other at the same time. (We don't have a word for learning and teaching at

each other in a round robin to see which one would triumph. The winner was a very

each other's needs."

Earth's atmosphere would fall back to a persistent equilibrium, and become as

Earth's surface (except perhaps volcanic lava) are recycled sediments, and

economies possessed a highly coevolutionary and gamelike character, which he hoped

economy, spontaneous cooperation is a regular occurrence. Widespread

economy stable and growing.

edge; the driver who jumps out last, wins. Stag Hunt is the dilemma faced by a

Ehrlich came across a word to describe this tightly coupled dance in the title of

Ehrlich noticed that in this sense the butterfly was reflected in the plant, and

either the direct products of living organisms or else have been greatly modified

embrace, "The evolution of a species is inseparable from the evolution of its

emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?"

emergent, coevolutionarily wired symbiosis. Whole communities can be

emergent cohesion out of the parts, but this cohesion can actively temper its own

endgames can spawn.

enemy or obligate colleague. This tight mutual destiny closely paralleled the

engineering firm of all time, NASA. In 1972, Lovelock offered a hypothesis of

England. He maintained a spotless scientific reputation, yet he had no formal

entropy draws all chemical reactions down to their minimal energy level. The

environment shapes its creatures and the creatures shape their environment, and if

environment. The two processes are tightly coupled as a single indivisible

epiphany that the Earth's biosphere exhibits a regulation beyond chemical

equilibria.

equilibrium. Vernadsky noted that "organisms exhibit a type of self-government"

Equivalent probes to Venus brought back the same bad news: the solar system was

erroneous drift in the chameleon's coloration process. Otherwise, the

escalating evolution is lost because there are not enough periods of stability to

Even in the abstract, the "real" answer depends on such specific factors as the

event can and often does cause an arbitrarily large effect. A tiny program can

Every complex adaptive organization faces a fundamental tradeoff. A creature must

evolution is, even if artificially.

evolution itself is a type of learning. Therefore learning occurs wherever

evolution of manufactured entities, is coevolution. Nothing changes without also

evolution toward and with each other. Every step of coevolutionary advance winds

expanded these coevolutionary experiments by increasing the population of players

experiment. But it would spend periods being brown before returning to green. Its

experimenting with new traits (wings). It can never do all things at once. This

exploiting an opponent's strategy-it merely mirrored the other's actions.

exploit (sure bet now) is the game a hospital has to play. Living organisms have a

exploration. But from the society of individuals' point of view, you ought to try

extremes and thereby seek its own survival. The solidarity produced by a planetary

face of the moon."

facing each other will create a fun-house hall that ricochets an image back and

fact, biologists have found that almost all symbiotic alliances in nature entail a

feeds on, in a box while waiting for the larvae to metamorphose. After

few notions from game theory to penetrate the popular culture was the distinction

field of creatures mirrored in a coevolving environment and each other is what

field of effects spinning back on themselves. The reasons for things do not

fields, and in macroscopic statistical effects, such as rates of reaction and the

final color of the mirror visitor: "The chameleon will stay whatever color he was

fined. Cooperation pays, but so does betrayal, if played right. What would you do?

first, but then later "warm up" to it, and so change colors.

flicker all over the place. The chameleon won't ever be a uniform color.

following:

follow the elusive chameleon. Gregory asserted that the creature would settle at a

For centuries, the orthodox political reasoning originally articulated by Thomas

for changing colors. The chameleon on a mirror riddle is best kept in idealized

forever trying to catch up with his own moving reflection?

for evidence of bacterial life. One of the consultants hired by NASA was a

form as a thought experiment.

former times. Tiny oceanic microorganisms solidify carbon and oxygen gases

For the mirrored world of marketing, this third answer means the consumer freezes.

forth until it vanishes into an infinite regress. Any message loosed between the

found only in life because we have built machines that contain them. Rather,

from game theory was that nonzero-sum games had very different strategic

from one creature to its most intimate neighbors, and then ripples out in fainter

furnace?

furnace metaphor breaks down. Equilibrium on a dead planet is less like a

further because the crucial concept of self- government as a purely mechanical

Gaia is a bounded whole. As a living system, its inert, mechanistic parts are part

games. One of the most illustrative examples of alliance making in nature is the

Games such as Prisoner's Dilemma can be played by any kind of adaptive agent-not

games: the winner's earnings are deducted from the loser's assets. Natural

games were called "social dilemmas" in the technical literature, but could be

games. Wolverines don't have to lose just because bears live. The highly connected

game the abiotic stuff of the universe. It makes even the rocks part of its

gases surrounding a planet would yield the secret of whether life inhabited the

gene-pattern] does not specify in detail how a kitten shall catch a mouse, but

geological event." If rocks are slow life, then our machines are quicker slow

given the resting point of everything else. We find intelligence and life spooky

good communications could develop cooperative structures without heavy central

greater advantage for one party-in effect some hint of parasitism-in every

greater but riskier gain. Played over time with the same partners, the results are

grows out of such simple rules intrigued John von Neumann, the mathematician who

had discovered that "the shadow of the future," cast by playing a game repeatedly

hand, Brand opined that equilibrium of any sort was next to impossible, and that

hares increase. And when the hares increase the foxes do too, and so on.

have only intensified interest in the conditions necessary for hatching

health and evolutionary systems caught the attention of holistically minded

He either locks onto whatever brand he began with, or he stops purchasing

he examined the biosphere in succeeding years, he added more complex phenomena to

Herbert Spencer, and Darwin, too, understood it intuitively-that the physical

(high payoff) or defection (low, but sure payoff)? Deadlock is a boring game where

high-powered optics, would it seem stranger than a virus? Gaia hovers there, a

hills, awesome painted desert canyons, game-filled valleys-are all as much the

hinted that a majority of nuclei in snow crystals may be decayed vegetation,

hippies.

his interpretation of its atmosphere. The NASA orbiters that circled Mars later in

Hobbes in 1651 was dogma: that cooperation could only develop with the help of a

host plant. Fanatical butterfly collectors had long ago figured out that the best

hosts." Like most biological observations, the notion of coevolution was not new.

How did Lovelock know?

hue, and whether other factors influence the signals-all the usual critical values

human/machine. The organism behaves as environment, the environment behaves as

Hundred Years then can rightly say, "The Industrial Revolution was an astonishing

hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and many other gases. Iron- and metal-concentrating

I bought a color-changing lizard and placed it inside. Although Brand's riddle had

if it is one, he maintains that it really is a system that has living

If life were to vanish from Earth, Vernadsky realized, not only would the planet

illuminating, and became the guinea pig model for over 200 published social

immune system, or an evolutionary system. All share that paradoxical quality of

implications than zero-sum games. In zero-sum games whatever hurts the other guy

importantly, according to the little literature I read, anoles change colors for

In 1967, Lovelock wrote two papers predicting that Mars would be lifeless based on

in 1974. Writes Brand of his riddle: "I asked the question of Gregory Bateson at a

In 1980, Robert Axelrod, a political science professor at University of Michigan,

In 1990, Kristian Lindgren, working at the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen,

In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the

in a fun-house nonsense. Rather than cause and control being dispensed in a

In articulating life as a chameleon on a rocky mirror, Vernadsky committed heresy

incompatible, or rather too compatible since they should burn each other up.

In computation, or at least in our old models of computation, an arbitrarily small

increasingly more codependent than ever. All politics these days means global

induction, intelligence, evolution, and coevolution into a periodic table of life.

industries-is another facet of an increasing coevolutionary economic world. Rather

industry-initiated standards (both of quality and protocols such as 110 volts or

In eastern Mexico live a variety of acacia shrubs and marauding ants. Most acacias have thorns, bitter leaves, and other protection against a hungry world. One, the "swollen thorn acacia," learned to encourage a species of ant to monopolize it as a food source and kill or run off all other predators. Enticements gradually included nifty water-proof swollen thorns to live in, handy nectar fountains, and special ant-food buds at the leaf tips. The ants, whose interests increasingly coincided with the acacia's, learned to inhabit the thorns, patrol the acacia day and night, attack every acacia-hungry organism, and even prune away invading plants such as vines and tree seedlings that might shade Mother Acacia. The acacia gave up its bitter leaves, sharp thorns, and other devices and now requires the acacia-ant for survival. And the ant colonies can no longer live without the acacia. Together they're unbeatable.

In evolutionary time, the instances of coevolution have increased as sociability

in feedback circuits. If one could alter these functions in a real chameleon, one

influencing in roundabout, diffuse ways. Small blips can make big splashes, and

informational. A steady exchange of information welds them into a single system.

informed by participating in rituals and traditions rather than by reflection. On

In his magazine CoEvolution Brand began collecting stories of coevolutionary

in life has increased. The more copious life's social behaviors are, the more

inseparable from the butterfly. And vice versa. Any long-term antagonistic

instabilities.

instability, moved the chemical circuitry of the Earth's atmosphere into what

instability." The key of life is its ability to reproduce slightly out of kilter

institutional affiliation, a rarity in the heavily funded world of science. His

intensify life further. We harness fossil energy and breathe life into machines.

intensity going from the material environment of the rocks and atmosphere to the

interacting chemical reactions into a raised state that should at any minute swing

Interaction and Coevolution. But what actually happens is more like a tango. The

interaction with living organisms meant that rocks were the part of life that

interrupted by very sudden, short-lived episodes of instability, when old species

in the calculus of lateral causality make fine sense: that all we can see around

In the Network Era-that age we have just entered-dense communication is creating

In the physical universe the effect that one event has on another tends to

in time. The health of it is forward-systemic self-education which feeds on

into my right. But she also knows that I know she knows that, so I'll keep it in

into one whole system. As an introduction Brand penned a definition: "Evolution is

into the air and alters the global air mix, the realm of our artificial machines

into the mirrored box, an act which inserts a blue eye and red nose into the

into whatever they touch, and they reach for everything. On Earth, life elbows its

intuition rather than the modern notion of detailed facts. Lamarck made an

intuitive guess about the biosphere and again was prescient. Since there wasn't a

invited only the monarch to dine on it.

is a chameleon placed on the mirror?

is a highly reactive gas, combining with many elements in a fierce explosive union

is good for you. In nonzero-sum games you can both do well, or both do poorly. I

is growing with time." The more life, the greater its material force. Humans

is not so much the organism or the species that evolves, but the entire system,

I sometimes posed the chameleon riddle to my interviewees. The scientists

"is to assist the wind and waves to stir the brewing biosphere."

it all depends on its emotional state. It might be frightened by its image at

It may be that an exact answer to the riddle requires future experiments with an

it possesses all the attributes needed for an organism.

its coevolutionary antics.

It seemed to Lovelock as if an invisible power, an invisible hand, pushed the

itself watching a mirror, or becomes so dependent upon its enemies that it apes

its ingredients. But bully life reaches deeper and ties up the entire planet in

its own being-a living insect/plant system-pulling itself up by its bootstraps.

it was brown it might tend to go to green.

it would still win a tournament because it had the highest cumulative score when

Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who in 1800 had even less information about planetary

just humans. Bacteria, armadillos, or computer transistors can make choices

keep the system going. Error keeps the glue of coevolutionary relationships from

Kevin Kelly -- Chapter 5: Coevolution

known in the evolutionary trade as punctuated equilibrium, or "punk eek" for

large corporations-particularly among those in the information and network

larger essence-a "lizard-glass"-which acts differently than either a chameleon or

leads to the oscillating dynamics found everywhere in the wilds of nature; how fox

leaves on trees in the spring-and returned to that one color each time I tried the

lesser cycles inform each other in constant coevolutionary communication. From the

levels are needed for most microbial life, and since microbial fossils are

life.

life and planet was coevolution, the dance of the chameleon on the mirror.

life dominates, it will keep the chemicals of Earth off key.

life-friendly atmosphere might not be oxygen-rich, but it should buck textbook

Life in coevolution, which has the remarkable knack of generating stable

life, intelligence, coevolution are off-balanced, unexpected, even unreasonable,

life looping back upon itself do?

life" that we know. It is an odd beast: 99.9 percent rock, a lot of water, and a

likeliest candidates for extraterrestrial life, Mars and Venus, and poke a

likely they are to be subverted into mutually beneficial interactions. The more

limestone caves, ores in mine, chalk cliffs, and the very structure of all that we

limits. But if you gave every patient the current best drug, you'd never get

little air, wrapped up in the thinnest green film that would stretch around it.

little could escape life's imprint. "It may be that the core of our planet is

living cells." Somewhere at the boundary of Gaia, either in the rarefied airs of

"Living matter is the most powerful geological force," Vernadsky claimed, "and it

lizard-glass demonstrates an entirely different logic-the circular causality of

looking through a telescope. He could measure the spectrum of a planet's

loops of coevolutionary conflict mean the whole can reward (or at times cripple)

Lovelock brought an engineer's sensibilities to the analysis of Mother Earth. He

Lovelock calls a "persistent state of disequilibrium." At any moment, the

Lovelock came up with a radical proposal that irked the rest of the folks on the

Lovelock expanded the definition of life without asking their permission. He

Lovelock kept gazing into the mirror and finding that it was nearly bottomless. As

Lovelock means by Gaia.

Lovelock recognized that persistent almost-fell is a hallmark of life. Recently

Lovelock saw that if you had a vast network of coevolutionary impulses, such that

Lovelock told them he could determine whether there was life on a planet by

Lovelock was very rare breed in modern science. He practiced science as a

lowlands, hills, valleys, and mountains, are exclusively products of the animals

machine from inert computers, so the prospect of artificial learning evolving

making varieties of sweaters is much cheaper than making varieties of dishwashers.

Many biologists (including Paul Ehrlich) are unhappy with the idea of Gaia because

MATHEMATICIAN JOHN HOLLAND: It goes kaleidoscopic! There's a lag time, so it'll

matter is a specific kind of rock...an ancient and, at the same time, an eternally

matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, from oaks to algae, could be regarded as

maverick, working out of a stone barn among the rural hedgerows in Cornwall,

may be biogenic. Summer thunderstorms may be life raining on itself. Some studies

means all organisms in an ecosystem partake in a continuum of coevolution, from

Medieval life was remarkably unnarcissistic. Common folk had only vague notions of

Mercury. It is fundamental to the twin concepts of object and action. Locality of

middle value in its color range. I insisted that the poor beast trying to

might stay green, and if it was red it might stay red, but if you put it in when

might want to announce your strategy in public so the other players need to adapt

military budget, which helped get this whole process going that ended the cold

milkweed, although competitors in a way, cannot live apart. Paul Ehrlich sees

milkweed and monarch, shoulder to shoulder, lock into a single system, an

milkweed pushes the butterfly, and the harder they push the more impossible it

millions of years. The ordinary laws of chemistry permit a scientist to make

minerals. "The purpose of animals," he once said of their locomotion and movement,

mirror as the hider goes through this open-ended routine: "I just hid the penny in

mirror back to us every nuance of our collective action. A steady paper trail of

mirror/chameleon system freezes solidly onto whatever initial value it begins

mirror is merely in a constant state of fright at its own amplified strangeness

mirrorlike reciprocation. In this environment, all evolution, including the

mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon. What color is the consumer when

monarch larvae at bay so the worm wouldn't devour it completely, forced the

monarch to "change colors" and devise a way to circumvent the plant's defenses.

more omnipresent mirrors. Every consumer becomes both a reflection and reflector,

motif matches the general pattern of evolution found in earthly fossils, a pattern

moved the slowest. The mountains, the waters of the ocean, and the gases of the

movement. Bateson had a most orthodox Oxford education and a most unorthodox

moving closer to its changing neighbors.

multimillion-dollar gadget, or even a rocket at all.

mutual bluffing, codeception, imitation, reflection, and "game playing" would

mutual defection pays best. The last one, the Prisoner's Dilemma, is the most

mutually responsive we construct our economic and material world, the more

mutual second-guessing between seller and buyer-how much will he accept, how much

mutual second-guessing. The riddle "What hand is the penny in?" is related to the

my left."

my right hand, and now the guesser will think it's in my left, so I'll move it

NASA probe team. They really wanted to land a meter on a another planet. He said

National Academy of Science gave me," he said pointing to a plaque on the wall,

NATURALIST PETER WARSHALL: A chameleon changes color out of a fright response so

Nature is chock-a-block with coevolution. Every green corner sports parasites,

navel?

network of a billion species on this home planet are knit together so that

news-creates a commons from which cooperation, self-organization, and win-win

no creatures could escape creating its own substrate and the substrate its own

noise-wholly unexpected and out-of-character choices-the opportunity for

no matter what clever strategy you engineer or evolve in a world laced by

not quite right. We are not hammering together a cozy global village. We are

not so alien.

Not so the Earth. The mixture of gases in the atmosphere of the Earth are way out

now filling its universe. I certainly would go nutty in a mirrored box. Finally,

nuclei for the condensation of cloud droplets. Thus perhaps even clouds and rain

obey absolutely, it will not be evolutionary resilient to competing strategies.

observations were not influential. He wrote in 1802, "Complex mineral substances

ocean diatoms are mostly inert, crystallized calcium. Trees are mostly dead pulp.

of alliances. What happens, then, when coevolution saturates a complete planet?

of all kinds that constitute the external crust of the Earth occurring in the form

of any vivisystem: an economy, a natural ecosystem, a deep computer simulation, an

of California at Santa Barbara, where his eccentric brilliant views on mental

of checking for life on planets, a method that did not require a

of consciousness-self-consciousness. Both of us being biologists, we swerved to

off-balance-in intelligence and consciousness itself. To some extent a mind, even

offer? The aspect von Neumann found amazing was that this infinite regress of

of fox and hare, but the populations also created many other natural phenomenon

of individual accumulations, ore bodies, parallel strata, etc., and forming

of its life. Lovelock: "There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's

of playing against all the other strategies running; the ones with the highest

often say, 'Well I'm doing better than the other guy, therefore I must be doing

of the Earth seems to be a vast unstable chemical anomaly.

of Toronto writes: "An O2 content of about 20 percent seems to ensure a balance

of toxicity or increased combustibility of organic material." But where are the

of whack. And they are out of whack, Lovelock was to find out, because of the

of zero-sum and nonzero-sum games. Chess, elections, races, and poker are zero-sum

on a steady temperature. The uniform 20 percent oxygen level it has found turns

on average than other companies. The surge of alliance-making in the 1990s among

once-reminded many scientists of game playing. A simple child's game such as

one can say where that line is, if there is a line.

One marvelous result from these experiments bears consideration by anyone hoping

One of the first to articulate

one side is a responsive mirror, just as the chameleon is, in part reflecting, in

On the mirror the lizard stabilized at one color of green-the green of young

on two counts. He enraged biologists by considering the biosphere of living

or constant change, or some homeostatic point in between.

organism.

organisms transport carbon from the air into soil and lower into the sea bottom,

Oskar Morgenstern) Theory of Games and Economic Behavior because he perceived that

other..." in his 1859 masterpiece Origin of Species.

other reasons in addition to trying to match their background. As Warshall said,

other's antagonism. The two become one. Biochemist James Lovelock writes of this

other strategies, they would thrive only as long as their prey survived. This

other students. One of them, Gerald Hall, proposed a third hypothesis for the

Our entire manufactured infrastructure-as an extension of our own bodies-becomes

Out of Control

out. The measurements from the telescopes, and later the probes, matched the

out to be "fortuitous" as one scientist put it. Lower oxygen would be anemic,

out when it can't get any lower.

oxygen has remained at about 20 percent for hundreds of millions of years. The

Oxygen in particular, at 21 percent, makes the Earth's atmosphere unstable. Oxygen

paleologic past and is expected to keep rising.) Here's news: half of the living

paradox. He saw it most vividly in the relationship between a butterfly and its

paradoxical essence is contagious. Vivisystems spread their poised instability

parasites and symbionts; and the world economy may be primarily a crowded network

Parasitic behavior itself is a new territory for organisms to make a living in.

part generating? The very act of accommodating itself to its own reflection would

part of a wider, global-scale life. As the carbon dioxide from our industry pours

patterns of gases and material flows on Earth. All this led him to suggest in

Perhaps the most useful lesson of coevolution for "wannabe" gods is that in

periodic table, and as dead. The chemistry of the Earth was out of kilter, wholly

persistent and stable.

Pervasive digitalization of the approaching future promises clearer, faster, and

planet if given a chance.

planets, the equations roughly balance: energy, compounds in; energy, compounds

played against many kinds of rules. As Axelrod pointed out to William Poundstone,

Played only once, betrayal of the other is the soundest choice. But when two

player could not be dismissed; he demanded to be attended to, either as obligate

Playing coevolutionary games in computers has provided other lessons. One of the

point in our interview when we were lost in contemplation of the function, if any,

politics and global politics means copolitics. The new online communities built

possible. In fact, it may be that once the chameleon bellies up to the mirror, it

post-World War II. Coevolution moves things to the absurd. The butterfly and the

presence, is stable in its own way. As far as we can tell Earth's atmospheric

primitives. Scientists are cataloguing the elemental components for adaptation,

Prisoner's Dilemma strategies. Each random strategy would be scored after a round

"prisoners" played the game over and over, learning from each other-a game known

proceed like an arrow, but rather spread to the side like a wind.

process."

process had not yet been uncovered. How could a mere machine control itself?

product of life as the honeycomb.

proliferating.

proven new drugs. From an individual's point of view you should never do the

provides a learning mechanism and a tendency to play, so that it is the mouse

psychology experiments in the late 1960s.

pursuing self-reflections, that same madness we sensed in the nuclear arms race of

Putting a chameleon on a mirror seemed a simple enough experiment that I thought

Quarterly: "Ecology is a whole system, alright, but coevolution is a whole system

Rabid mutualism doesn't just happen in pairs. Threesomes can meld into an

ran a tournament pitting 14 submitted strategies of Prisoner's Dilemma against

ranged over the map. Some examples:

rather than once, encouraged cooperation, because it made sense for a player to

rather than with exactitude. This almost-falling into chaos keeps life

reaction time of the chameleon's color cells, their sensitivity to a change in

recently translated into English.

reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species," says John Thompson in

recursive dynamics of coevolution. The butterfly pushes the milkweed, and the

reflections onto the common denominators of only a few dishwasher images, since

related with the constitution of the Earth's crust," Vernadsky wrote in 1929.

relationship seemed to harbor this kind of codependency. In 1952, W. Ross Ashby, a

Researchers at the U.S. government-funded RAND corporation, a think tank based in

response to itself-you can win without beating others. Hard-nosed CEOs in the

resting color in the box was not the same dark brown it seemed to like when out of

rest of the universe, intelligence and consciousness and life are stable

resulted in the highest scores over the long term? And what strategies succeeded

results for the following important reasons: the lizard I used was not a true

results predicted by the equations.

rich literature of plant/butterfly communities, whose summary indicated that many

riddle, "What color is the chameleon on a mirror?" The bottomless complexity which

run. A little touch of randomness (mistakes, imperfections), on the other hand,

said.

same color it uses when it is frightened. It may be that the chameleon in the

Santa Monica, California, extended von Neumann's initial work and eventually

scores got copied the most to the next generation, so that the most successful

security with fewer tanks rather than with more tanks. Gorbi unilaterally threw

Sedimentation, weathering, uplift-all the grand geological forces-also act as

self-governance, the idea of a planet evolving such graceful feedback circuits is

self-making and self-control. The "obligate cooperation" of Ehrlich's

sensors and the thermostatic control mechanisms? For that matter, where is the

set out to measure it quantitatively in his book The Biosphere, a volume only

short.

shred of scientific evidence to support Lamarck's claims at the time, his

sides gain over all, and so the pact continues.

signals, dampening values, etc., they can tailor a system to seek either a

similar tradeoff in deciding how much mutation and innovation is needed to keep up

simple strategy crafted by psychologist Anatol Rapoport called Tit-For-Tat. The

Since the guesser goes through a similar process, the players form a system of

sink back into the "chemical calm" of an equilibrium state, but the clay deposits,

Sitting in his book-lined office, Robert Axelrod mused on the consequences of

sky were very slow life. Naturally, geologists balked at this apparent mysticism.

slips into some deranged state far from sanity. There is a sort of madness in

"smart" machine. We already are stymied in trying to design an artificial learning

soft-spoken British biochemist, James Lovelock, who found that he had a better way

so it will zero in on a number of colors. If you put it in when it's green it

some biologists because his very long runs displayed long periods when the mix of

some elevated potential. Presumably if all life on Earth were extinguished, the

some experiments." How much to explore (gain for the future) versus how much to

some mutualisms allow for the evolution of new social behaviors." In true

something?

species of strategies arose and persisted for many thousands of generations. This

species plus environment. The two are inseparable." The entire system of evolving

speed of sound.

sphere. You therefore didn't need to hurl an expensive canister across the solar

stability is a state of perpetual almost-falling ensured by constant error.

stark independence both nurtured and demanded free thinking. In the early 1960s

states, fending off disturbances, complexifying, and ready to transform another

Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand, a student of Bateson's, was himself a legendary promoter of

Stewart Brand posed that riddle to Gregory Bateson in the early 1970s. Bateson,

stock market made of thousands of mutual second-guessing agents, the group of

straight line from its origin, it spreads horizontally, like creeping tide,

strategies for these kinds of mutual games, because at first glance they seemed

strategies propagated. Because many strategies could succeed only by "preying" on

strategies to prevail for relative eons by not being so easily aped. Without

strong chemical agents, breaking and making the bonds of materials. Thermodynamic

stronger than coevolution," at least as biologists use the word.

study the motions of the Jovian moons without taking into account the motion of

styles of sweaters, while a dishwasher manufacture will try to focus the

Such a remarkable conclusion was foreshadowed by the French natural philosopher,

such as parasitism, spontaneously emerging symbiosis, and long-term stable

sufficiently complex medium, including that of iron gears and levers, or even

supplier. But many do, and as far as I can tell, live profitable lives, no shorter

surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of

swerved to follow it. The chase arrives at the odd conclusion that consciousness,

symbionts, and tightly coupled dances. Biologist P. W. Price estimated that over

symbionts embracing each other can only seem to lead to stagnant solipsism. But

system: lizard-mirror, plant/insect, rock-life, and now in modern times,

system to find out. He already knew the answer.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

technological-adapting to and creating each other, and at the same time weaving

than eat or compete with a competitor, the two form an alliance-a symbiosis.

than was available to Vernadsky, and a slightly better understanding of the global

that even a writer could perform it. So I did. I built a small, mirrored box, and

That Gaia is made up of many purely mechanical circuits shouldn't deter us from

That invisible hand was coevolutionary life.

That is, a competing strategy will figure out how to exploit your rule in the long

that they are now sustaining." Lovelock had more complete knowledge of early Earth

the adaptive system would oscillate without direction or end. He imagined the

The amazing Darwin himself wrote of "coadaptions of organic beings to each

The bold claims of Lamarck, Vernadsky, and Lovelock seem ludicrous at first, but

The butterfly and the milkweed constantly dance around each other, and by this

The chameleon on the mirror is a completely open system. Neither the lizard nor

The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human

The "co" in coevolution is the mark of the future. In spite of complaints about

the cold war, which had taken on the flavor of a coevolutionary "obligate

The conflicting colors (and conflicting viewpoints in a society of mind) would

the decade, and the spectacular Mars soft landings the decade following made it

The dethronement of learning is one of the most exciting intellectual frontiers we

the development of the atom bomb, he did not formally apply his own theories to

The Earth's atmosphere seeks a steady oxygen level much as a thermostat hones in

the environment. Alfred Lotka, an early theoretical biologist, wrote in 1925, "It

The formal definition of coevolution runs something like this: "Coevolution is

the gamelike politics of the nuclear arms race. But after von Neumann's death in

The give and take of a coevolutionary relationship-teaching and learning at

the glass has any secrets. The grand closure of Gaia keeps cycling because all its

The Greek philosophers were obsessed with the chain of causality, how the cause of

The important point about the chameleon on the mirror riddle is that the lizard

their own image in the broad sense. Their individual and social identities were

The life-meter that NASA came up with was a complicated, delicate (and expensive)

The lines of control in natural ecologies also dissolve into a causality horizon.

the list of life-made. Some examples: plankton in the oceans release a gas (DMS)

the material resources of the planet. He called this grand system of resources the

the mirrored box.

The mirror is a clever metaphor for informational circuits. Two ordinary mirrors

themselves into some aggregate state of spooky, stable instability.

them, then we declare it insane. Yet there is a touch of insanity-a touch of the

The mutual reflections became a dance of two chameleons belly to belly. In

the Net. In the realm of recursive reflections, an event is not triggered by a

The network of life on Earth, like all distributed being, transcends the life of

the other hand, the modern world is being paved with mirrors. We have ubiquitous

The particles for learning lie everywhere in all inert media, waiting to be

The parties in a symbiosis don't have to be symmetrical or even at parity. In

the plant was reflected in the butterfly. Every step the milkweed took to keep the

The Prisoner's Dilemma, invented in 1950 by Merrill Flood at RAND, is a game for

the prospect of perfect specimens, they did this thoroughly. The result was a

There are other possible answers, too. While conducting interviews for this book,

therefore all rocks are biogenic in nature, that is, in some way affected by life.

there for millions of years. She never falls, but never gets out of falling. It's

There is a strong sense, which I hope to demonstrate in this book, in which

there is no analog of distance. One memory location is as easily influenced as

there is this observer problem: I can only see the lizard when my face is peeking

The relentless push and pull of coevolutionary life eventually brings into its

the richness of social behaviors may increase mutualism with other species, so may

thermostat and more like the uniform level of water in a bowl; it simply levels

the same time, but our schooling would improve if we did.)

the steady demise of interpersonal relationships, the lives of modern people are

the stratosphere or deep in the Earth's molten core, the effects of life fade. No

The trouble with Gaia,

the two antagonists more inseparably, until each is wholly dependent on the

The two heresies melded into a beautiful symmetry. Life as ever-renewing mineral,

The type of market is determined by quantity and speed of feedback signals.

the web of its network, also roping in the nonliving matrix of rock and gas into

they also alter in response to fright. And frightened it was. The anole did not

They are held together, poised upright like a pencil standing on its point, by the

they didn't have to bother.

"they think it helped avoid nuclear war." Although von Neumann was a key figure in

think people often take a zero-sum view of the world when they shouldn't. They

Thirty years ago,

This cooperation is not a new age spiritualism. Rather it is what Axelrod calls

This has been a venerable idea at the edge of science for at least several hundred

This, in fact, is what engineers do when they devise electronic control circuits

This is the most logical answer in my view. The coupling between mirror and

This method required that collectors figure out which plants butterflies ate. With

This was the point in the conversation when Stewart Brand pointed out to Gregory

thought of as the four building blocks of complicated coevolutionary games. They

Three decades later, free-thinker James Lovelock arrived at the same conclusions

Thus we find parasites upon parasites. Ecologist John Thompson notes that "just as

Tit-For-Tat could not beat anyone's strategy one on one, but in a nonzero-sum game

Tit-For-Tat strategy prescribed reciprocating cooperation for cooperation, and

to 1,000, introducing random noise into the games, and letting this artificial

to be submerged and fossilized into oil. Life generates methane, ammonia, oxygen,

together with Norbert Wiener, was a founding father of the modern cybernetic

to guide spaceships or steer robot arms. By tweaking delay times, sensitivity to

to illuminate with simple game dynamics. The price of eggs, say, is determined by

to it." Gorbachev's strategy was effective because he did it publicly;

to its own reflection?

to manage coevolutionary forces. It's another law of the gods. It turns out that

tournament by never beating anybody." But with coevolution-change changing in

trace gases such as nitrous oxide and methyl iodide also remain at elevated and

transformation, the butterfly would emerge in the box sporting flawless unworn

trying to anticipate each other. He called his 1944 book (coauthored by economist

TV cameras, and ceaseless daily polling ("63 Percent of Us Are Divorced") to

two opposing mirrors bounces to exhaustion without changing its form. But what if

two separately held prisoners who must independently decide whether to deny or

two sides of this equation cannot be mathematically unraveled; they are one

unbalanced by the periodic table, and alive. From this, Lovelock concluded that

unbidden at a planetary scale seems ludicrous.

unchanged as a result of life; but it would be unwise to assume it," Lovelock

understanding coevolution and then added, "I hope my work on the evolution of

understood it for the archetypal case of adaptive feedback it was. Their answers

undeserved reputation as a loser, in part because he relied a little too much on

unilaterally enlarged life's scope to include a predominantly mechanical

unilaterally withdrawing in secret would have done nothing.

unraveling the coevolutionary fabric becomes impossible, and the parts elevate

Upon close inspection, geologists have concluded that all rocks residing on the

up the billions of organisms on Earth and considered their collective impact upon

useful theory of schizophrenia. While in his sixties, he taught at the University

us-the snow-covered Himalayas, the deep oceans east and west, vistas of rolling

vertical, but as an acrobat teetering between tilting and falling, and poised

Von Neumann invented a mathematical theory of games. He defined a game as a

Von Neumann was particularly interested in seeing if he could develop optimal

want to go into the mirrored box. The color green it presented in the box is the

war."

was a tinkerer, inventor, patent holder, and had worked for the biggest

was devoted to the larger notion of all things-biological, societal, and

was the Russian geologist Vladimir Vernadsky, writing in 1926. Vernadsky tallied

waves until it immeasurably touches all living organisms. In this way the loose

way into solid, liquid, gas. No rocks, to our knowledge, are untouched by life in

way to get perfect specimens was to encase a caterpillar, along with a plant it

weaving together a crowded global hive-a coworld of utmost sociality and

we call fire or burning. Thermodynamically, the high oxygen content of Earth's

well.' In a nonzero-sum you could be doing better than the other guy and both be

We now know that self-control and self-governance are not mystical vital spirits

went extinct and new ones took root. Quickly a new stable arrangement of new

were at peace with each other. The chameleon on the mirror flipping without rest

were: Chicken, Stag Hunt, Deadlock, and the Prisoner's Dilemma

were energized by the sun's rays, and heated by the planetary core, and then

were half-alive. Since the genesis of every rock was in life, their gradual

We see this happening in networked markets. A sweater manufacturer will try to rig

What color

What does a sphere of reflecting, responsive, coadapting, and recursive bits of

When a chemist derives the approximate formulas for Mars, Venus, and the other

When a human mind goes off the deep end and gets stuck in the spiral of watching

when played against many varieties of players, from the ruthless to the kind?

When the chameleon steps onto the mirror, the cause of his color dissolves into a

When the hares increase the foxes boom; when the foxes boom, the hares die off.

where the planet's self-government lay. He wrote, "The entire range of living

"Which hand is the penny in?" takes on the recursive logic of a chameleon on a

which oxidizes to produce submicroscopic aerosols of sulfate salts which form

which teaches the kitten the finer points of how to catch mice."

while greater oxygen would be too flammable. George R. Williams at the University

While Lovelock backs off earlier assertions that Gaia is an organism, or acts as

wide-ranging equilibrium (say, keeping the temperature between 68 and 70 degrees),

Wiener and Bateson launched the field of cybernetics.

wilderness, the economy, a mind, and networks on the other hand, are nonzero-sum

will dissolve before it reaches a natural saturation. Solids can release gases

wings. It would be immediately killed and mounted.

Win-win is the story of life in coevolution.

with.

with a changing environment. When they play the tradeoff against a sea of other

with microbiologist Lynn Margulis, the two published the view in 1972 so that it

with our chauvinistic attachment to learning as an exclusive mark of our species.

without ever being lowered. They remain poised in the act of collapsing.

"Without life, the face of the Earth would become as motionless and inert as the

working best when they remain poised in an Escher-like state of forever descending

world is codependent! Business consultants commonly warn their clients against

world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind

years. Many evolutionary biologists in the last century such as T. H. Huxley,

Yet the off-balance is itself balanced. The persistent disequilibrium that

young rock," Vernadsky wrote. Living creatures were delicate shells to hold these

you put him on the marketplace? Does he dip to the state of the lowest common

you want it or not.