Quarks to culture : how we came to be / Tyler Volk.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Quarks to Culture explores the rhythm within what Tyler Volk calls the "grand sequence," a series of levels of sizes and innovations building from elementary quanta to globalized human civilization. The key is "combogenesis," the building-up from combination and integration to produce new things with innovative relations.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Volk (biology and environmental studies, New York Univ.) describes 12 levels of a "grand sequence" that leads from the elementary particles of physics, through atoms, molecules, and the origin of life to the development of human culture. This sequence is divided into three "realms" governed consecutively by physical laws, biological evolution, and cultural evolution. Volk posits a mechanism ("combogenesis") to explain how components of lower levels combine to create new levels with unexpected emergent properties. Other chapters probe for parallel, unifying concepts and speculate on the next step in the sequence. Volk's writing is relaxed, articulate, and occasionally poetic. His imagery is easy to follow, but his purpose is unabashedly anthropocentric. Despite neologisms and grand scale, there is remarkably little that is new here; many of Volk's references date from the mid-20th century. Readers who do not understand the physics, biology, and anthropology presented will not be able to learn this foundational material from the text. Those who do understand the science will find repeated omissions and oversimplifications that undermine the interpretation. Quarks to Culture will make readers think, but in many ways it fails to provide the best framework and food for that thought. Summing Up: Recommended. With the caveats above. Upper-division undergraduates and researchers and faculty. --Roger M. Denome, MCPHS University