本书探讨了心灵如何从物质中涌现的奥秘，作者特伦斯·迪肯教授认为，心灵的产生并非简单的物质演化，而是包含了热力学、自组织、演化和符号学等多个层面的相互作用。他以零的起源为例，阐述了将“无”融入物理理论的重要性，并探讨了熵的概念、自组织系统如何通过生成熵来抵抗熵增、涌现现象的历史以及神秘主义的风险。迪肯教授还提出了新的视角，将涌现视为移除和约束的过程，并区分了正向过程和逆向过程，将涌现现象分为三个层次。书中还探讨了目的导向过程、自生模型、信息论与生物学之间的联系，以及意识的本质。迪肯教授认为，意识并非计算过程，而是一个自我解构的过程，并从新的角度解释了“意识难题”。

🤔 **将“无”融入物理理论：**本书以零的起源为例，阐述了将“无”融入物理理论的重要性。作者认为，零的出现并非简单地代表“没有”，而是代表了“缺失的存在”，它改变了我们对数量的理解，并为理解更复杂的现象提供了新的视角。例如，在物理学中，零点能的概念表明即使在绝对零度下，粒子仍然具有能量，这说明“无”并非真正的空无，而是包含着一种潜在的能量。将“无”融入物理理论，可以帮助我们更好地理解宇宙的本质，以及物质世界中各种现象的产生机制。

🤯 **熵与自组织：**本书探讨了熵的概念，以及自组织系统如何通过生成熵来抵抗熵增。作者认为，熵增是宇宙的基本规律，但自组织系统可以通过生成熵来抵抗熵增，并维持自身的稳定性。例如，生物体通过新陈代谢来抵抗熵增，并维持自身的生命活动。这种自组织过程并非简单的物质演化，而是包含了信息和能量的流动，以及系统内部的相互作用。

🧠 **涌现现象的三个层次：**本书将涌现现象分为三个层次：第一层是物理层面的涌现，例如水分子聚集成水滴；第二层是生物层面的涌现，例如单细胞生物进化成多细胞生物；第三层是心灵层面的涌现，例如意识的产生。作者认为，每个层次的涌现都包含了前一个层次的特性，但同时也具有新的特性。例如，意识的产生依赖于神经系统的复杂结构和功能，但意识本身并非简单的物质现象，它还包含了感知、思维、情感等心理过程。

Jim talks to Terrence Deacon about the ideas in his book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter...Jim talks to Terrence Deacon about the ideas in his book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. They discuss the story of zero, integrating absence into physical theories, systems that generate entropy to stave off entropy, the history of emergence & the risk of mysterianism, reframing emergence as removal & constraint, orthograde vs contragrade processes, 3 layers of emergence, the special case of end-directed (teleodynamic) processes, a simple model of autogenesis, contrasting & integrating Shannon, Boltzmann, and Bateson, moving toward sentience, nested teleodynamic processes, feeling as primary to consciousness, rethinking the nervous system in non-computational terms, consciousness as a self-undoing process, inverting the hard problem, and much more. Episode Transcript Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, by Terrence W. Deacon JRS - EP10 David Krakauer: Complexity Science JRS - Currents 053: Matthew Pirkowski on Grammars of Emergence JRS - Currents 015: Jessica Flack & Melanie Mitchell on Complexity JRS - EP148 Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, by Ilya Prigogine, Isabelle Stengers, & Alvin Toffler The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex, by Harold J. Morowitz JRS - EP105 Christof Koch on ConsciousnessProfessor Terrence W. Deacon has held faculty positions at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the University of California, Berkeley. His laboratory research has combined human evolutionary biology and neuroscience, with the aim of investigating the evolution of human cognition. This work extends from cellular-molecular neurobiology and cross-species fetal neural transplantation to the study of semiotic processes underlying animal and human communication, especially language. These topics are explored in his 1997 book, The Symbolic Species: The Coevolution of Language and the Brain. Currently, his theoretical interests have focused on the problem of explaining emergent phenomena, in such unprecedented transitions as the origin of life, the evolution of language, and the generation of conscious experience by brains. His 2012 book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, explores how the interrelationships between thermodynamic, self-organizing, evolutionary, and semiotic processes are implicated in the production of these emergent transitions.