Evolution and transitions in complexity: the science of hierarchical organization in nature. By Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis

In: Bioscience, 2017, 67 (7), pp.672-674. This book, written with 12 collaborators (biologists, physicists, and philosophers from various countries), is the result of a long-standing endeavor to find a law in the “organization of nature,” according to the expression used in an enlightening foreword. From 1994 on, Jagers op Akkerhuis has developed a conceptual system called the operator hierarchy allowing us to view nature (a concept encompassing all scales of the whole universe) as a ladder, with rungs of increasing complexity, from quarks to neural networks, which he considers “increasing perfection.”