Ark of the Sun: The Improbable Voyage of Life

ARK OF THE SUN provides an entirely new and holistic explanation for the origin and transformation of both life and human society. It does so by employing the revolutionary, demand-driven, general dynamic theory developed by Graeme Snooks over a life-time of cutting edge research. This book provides the capstone to Professor Snooks' extensive research, spanning five decades, on biological and social evolution. ARK OF THE SUN shows and explains how life on Earth is driven and shaped by a dynamic life system the author calls the "strategic logos". The "logos" is an entropy-defying, shock-deflecting system that has enabled biological forms and their societies to prosper in a hostile world. It is a system composed of materialist forces conceptually similar to the cosmos analysed by physicists, and to the human mind studied by psychologists. This book is essential to the understanding of life not only on Earth, but also wherever else in the Universe it might have emerged. And the theories it contains make possible what the intellectual tradition stretching from the ancient Greeks, through Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Darwin and Freud, down to the present, could never achieve -- a holistic understanding of biological and social dynamics. ARK OF THE SUN will be of interest to readers curious about the role of biological, social, economic, political, intellectual, and psychological transformations in life; and about the all-encompassing dynamic life system. Here is what one eminent international expert -- Professor Peter Schuster (President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, from the University of Vienna) -- has said: "The conventional view in science is often questioned by non-mainstream researchers, and once in a while, it pays to listen ... When I received Graeme Snooks' review presenting his view on evolution of the biosphere and human society ... I got the impression that demand-oriented evolutionary dynamics might be a useful view on problems of high complexity." (Editorial for 2008 in COMPLEXITY, Journal of the Santa Fe Institute).

Graeme Donald Snooks is Executive Director of the Institute of Global Dynamic Systems (IGDS) in Canberra. Formerly he was the Coghlan Research Professor in Economics and History in the Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University. Dr Snooks is an accomplished author, who has been at the cutting edge of research on social and biological dynamics for five decades. He has published 25 books as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals and edited books.