Promotional Information

Provides a general theory that gives a dynamic scientific foundation for the understanding of all living behavior.

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction What Is Life? Overview A Half Century of Findings on Work, Complexity, and Capability Work as Goal-directed Choice (laboro ergo sum) Complexity and Capability in Living Organisms Laying the Groundwork Awareness, Signaling, Language and Other Basic Concepts Minds, Bodies, Reductionism, and Systems Theory Potential and Applied Capability Throughout the Living Kingdom Life in the Pre-Linguistic World The Choice Making Functions of All Living Organisms The Whole Organism and Its Parts The Organism in Action Reality in the Sensible World as Cause-and-effect Testing The Language-Suffused World of Humans The Evolutionary Emergence of Homo Sapiens, with Language and Consciousness The Fruits of Evolution The Spread of Homo Sapiens Across the World The Language Suffused World: Prometheus, Pandora, and the Unicorns Modern Alchemy and the Disruption of Capitalist Democracy Time, Science, and Freedom Toward a Science-based Art of Social Ordering Values for a Living World: Freedom and Constraint, and Mutual Trust and Morals Some Retrospective Musings Glossary Bibliography Index

About the Author

ELLIOTT JAQUES is Visiting Research Professor in Management Sciences at George Washington University. He has been honored by awards from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Services and the Consulting Psychoanalytical Division of the American Psychological Association. He is the author of 21 previous books.