Abstract

This book critically examines how mathematical modeling shapes and limits a scientific approach to the natural world and how it affects society’s views of nature. It addresses the limits and historical, psychological, religious, and gendered roots of mechanistic thought. It questions traditional concepts such as determinism, reversibility, equilibrium, and the isolated system and challenges the view of physical reality as passive and inert, arguing that if nature is real it must transcend human representations. In particular, nature can be expected to self-organize in ways that elude a mechanist treatment. Instead of appealing to multiverses, for example, in order to resolve the mysteries of fine-tuning, cosmologists should look toward self-organizing processes on the cosmic scale. Hampered by its external focus, “first-order” science should become more self-reflective. If the scientific worldview can go beyond a stance of prediction and control, it could lead to a relationship with nature more amenable to survival.