Chapter 17 a mess

a mess The congestion was never relieved. On August 24, 1987, when Brian Arthur stepped through the front door for the first time, he nearly fell over on the receptionist's desk.The reception desk was crammed into a narrow recess behind the door, leaving only an inch or so for the door to open, and the hallway was lined with boxes full of books and papers, the copier was crammed into a cabinet, and a clerk His "office" was in the corridor, and the whole house was in chaos.Yet Arthur fell in love with the place at first sight. "I couldn't have imagined a better place to suit my interests and temperament," he said.In the peace, secrecy, and tranquility of this chaotic monastery there was somehow an intellectual dynamism.Ginger Richardson, the institute's program director, came out to meet him and show him around.She walked Arthur across the wrinkled linen floor to look at the lovely handcrafted decorations on the doors, the polished lampshades, and the intricately decorated ceiling.She told him how to go through what used to be the abbot's office, which is now the office of Cowan's director, to have coffee in the Eisenhower kitchen, and showed him the large conference room converted from the former chapel.The other wall of the meeting room used to be an altar, but now there is a blackboard covered with equations and diagrams.The light came in through the stained glass and flickered on the blackboard.She also showed him a row of cramped offices that had once been the dormitories of nuns and were now crowded with cheap metal desks and chairs for typists.Looking out from the office window is a sunny yard, and you can look out to the Sangri de Cristo Mountains in the distance through the window.

Arthur was in New Mexico for the first time, and he was already immersed in the excitement and confusion.The Sangrid Cristo Mountains, the bright desert sun and the crystal-clear desert landscape infected and shocked him no less than generations of painters and photographers.But he immediately sensed a special charm about the monastery. "I couldn't believe the whole atmosphere," Arthur said. "When I browse the books on display and the papers placed around, I feel a free and unrestrained atmosphere. I can't believe that such a place exists." He began to have a hunch that this economic seminar might It's going to be really exciting.

Under such office conditions, visiting scholars usually occupy an office in twos and threes. They write their names on paper and stick them on their office doors.At one point Arthur found the name of a man he wanted to meet very much: Stuart Kauffman of the University of Pennsylvania.Arthur met Kaufman briefly two years ago at an academic conference in Brussels.At the time Kaufman was extremely impressed by his lectures on the developing embryonic cell.Kaufman's idea was that cells transmit chemical messages that lead to the development of other cells in the embryo, forming a self-continuous network that produces an interconnected organism rather than just a mass of protoplasm.This concept echoes Arthur's idea of ​​human society as a self-continuous, mutually supporting, interacting network.He remembers saying to his wife Susan after returning from that academic conference: "I just listened to the most wonderful academic report in my life."

So, as soon as he got his office settled, he wandered over to Kaufman's.Hello, he said, do you remember we met two years ago? Hmm, don't remember much.Kaufman forgot about it.But please come in.Kaufman, forty-eight, was tanned, curly-haired, dressed in California casual, and had a very genial demeanor.Arthur's manner was equally genial, and he was in a mood to love everybody that morning.The conversation between the two quickly became lively. "Stu was a very warm man," said Arthur. "He's a guy you feel like hugging. I'm not a guy who goes around hugging people. But he's just such a lovely character." Of course, they were soon discussing economics.At first, they had their heads full of topics, but they didn't know what the other party wanted to hear.Arthur began telling Kaufman about his research on increasing returns. "It's a good start, and Stewart stepped in from here to talk to me about some of his latest thoughts."

That's how it tends to be.Arthur soon learned that Kaufman was an extraordinary creative person, like a composer, whose mind was always beating beautiful notes endlessly.He gave his opinions endlessly and talked to people very fast.Indeed, it seemed to be a way of thinking about things: by speaking his thoughts out loud.He goes on and on and on and on and on. This characteristic of him was already well known at the Santa Fe Institute.In the previous year of getting along, Kaufman had become a ubiquitous person.He is of Romanian descent and inherited a small estate and insurance business, so he is one of the few scientists who can buy a second residence in Santa Fe and live here for half a year.During each of the institute's seminars, Kaufman can be heard chugging along in his beautiful, confident baritone voice.During the question-and-answer period of each colloquium, he can be heard thinking aloud about how to conceptualize what is being said. "Let's imagine that there's a bunch of light bulbs that are randomly wired together, and, well, then..." At any point during the meeting, he can be heard raving about some of his latest thoughts to anyone who will listen.Rumor has it that he was once heard explaining some of his ideas on theoretical biology to a copier repairman.If he had no other visitors around, he would soon be explaining to his nearest colleagues what he had repeated a hundred times.It's endless, it's tireless.

This was enough to make his best friend scream and run away.But worse, it gave Kaufman a reputation for being overly self-centered, nagging and insecure, even though some of his colleagues would look back and say they cared deeply for Kaufman.They would have been more than willing to tell him, "Yeah, Stewart, that's a great idea. You're really smart." But regardless of how people really felt about Kaufman, Kaufman couldn't help himself.For twenty-five years he had been possessed by a vision--a vision so powerful, so irresistible, so breathtakingly beautiful that he could not help being drawn to it.

The closest English word to explain this sight is "order."But even that word fails to capture what Kaufman meant.Listening to Kaufman talk about order is like hearing some sort of primitive metaphysics in the language of mathematics, logic, and science.For Kaufman, order is the answer to the mystery of human existence, explaining how we, as living, thinking beings, are able to function in a universe that seems to be governed by chance, chaos, and blind laws of nature. creatures appear and exist.For Kaufman, order tells us that humans are indeed accidental products of nature, but not just accidental products.

Indeed, Kaufman is always hasty to add, Darwin was quite right: Humans and all other living organisms are undoubtedly the product of four billion years of random variation, random catastrophe, and random struggle for survival.We humans are not inventions of God, or aliens from space.But he would also stress that Darwin's method of natural selection is not the whole story of human existence.Darwin did not know that things have a self-organizing force, that is, a constant force to organize themselves into increasingly complex systems, although things also have a constant force to disintegrate forever, as described by the second law of thermodynamics.Nor did Darwin know that the forces of order and self-organization create living systems in the same way that they create the form of a snowflake, or the convection of molecules in a boiling pot of soup.So Kaufman declares that the story of life is indeed a story woven by chance and chance, but it is also a story about order: it expresses a deep, inner creativity.

"I love the story. Really love the story. My whole life is a scene from the story."