Complex Cosmic Evolution: The Cosmic Whole, Living Individuals, and the Formation of the Integrative Axis (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798185226940)

Complex Cosmic Evolution: The Formation of the Cosmic Whole, Living Individuals, and the Integrative Axis is the general-theoretical volume of The Trilogy of Complexity Evolution: Universe, Life, and Society. It develops a unified framework for understanding how complexity should be read across radically different domains: the universe as a whole, local cosmic structures, living systems, consciousness, society, and civilization.
The book begins from a central distinction: the universe does not become increasingly integrated as a whole. At the level of the cosmic whole, evolution remains governed by expansion, entropy increase, dilution, and long-term drift toward quiescence. Yet within this whole, local systems may form, aggregate, stabilize, and eventually ignite forms of integration that cannot be attributed to the universe as a whole. This distinction allows the book to separate the cosmic-whole line, the non-autonomous individual line, and the autonomous or integrative axis.
At the center of the volume is the Integrated Complexity Index (ICI) and its six-parameter framework, DCSFWM. The capacity triad-type diversity, effective carrier scale, and rate-weighted throughput-describes baseline complexity. The autonomous-integration triad-functional feedback, internal-state window, and callable historical memory-marks the emergence of systems capable of internal regulation, self-maintenance, and historical continuity. On this basis, the book argues that high baseline complexity does not by itself imply autonomy: galaxies, stars, planets, and prebiotic environments may exhibit vast structure and process intensity while still lacking FWM closure.
The volume also introduces a boundary-first method. Complexity is never assigned to an undefined whole; it is read only after an object domain and its boundary have been specified. Condensation-stabilization boundaries form components, aggregation-range boundaries form local individuals, and FWM-closure domains form autonomous systems. This boundary discipline prevents category errors such as treating galaxies as living systems, treating prebiotic chemistry as life, or projecting consciousness onto the cosmic whole.
As the opening volume of the trilogy, this book provides the conceptual map for the two following volumes. The second volume unfolds the non-autonomous universe from the Big Bang to the eve of life, where DCS may rise while FWM remains zero. The third volume begins at the transition to life, where controlled boundaries, feedback, windows, and memory close within the same domain and give rise to autonomous complexity. In this sense, the book is not a chronology of increasing complexity, but a theory of how different regions of complexity must be distinguished, connected, and compared.
Its guiding proposition is: the whole drifts toward quiescence, while local systems ignite; the baseline is capped, while autonomy ascends.

Author: Longji Li,Kaisheng Li
ISBN-13: 9798185226940
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 07/02/2026
Pages: 678
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.97lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.36d