Big Picture Science - Emergence
Your brain is made up of cells. Each one does its own, cell thing. But remarkable behavior emerges when lots of them join up in the grey matter club. You are a conscious being – a single neuron isn’t.
Find out about the counter-intuitive process known as emergence – when simple stuff develops complex forms and complex behavior – and all without a blueprint.
Plus self-organization in the natural world, and how Darwinian evolution can be speeded up.
- Randy Schekman – Professor of molecular and cell biology, University of California, Berkeley, 2013 Nobel Prize-winner
- Steve Potter – Neurobiologist, biomedical engineer, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Terence Deacon – Biological anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley
- Simon DeDeo – Research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute
- Leslie Valiant – Computer scientist, Harvard University, author of Probably Approximately Correct: Nature’s Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World
You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.