Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34828165›Full record

ArticleEntropy (Basel, Switzerland)2021

The World Is Not a Theorem.

Stuart Kauffman, Andrea Roli

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Is the emergence of life and of agency expected?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. A third transition in science?Interface focus · 2023
    Article
  7. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Stuart KauffmanInstitute for Systems Biology, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-7094-4312
Andrea RoliDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, Campus of Cesena, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, I-47522 Cesena, Italy.ORCID 0000-0001-9891-5441

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The evolution of the biosphere unfolds as a luxuriant generative process of new living forms and functions. Organisms adapt to their environment, exploit novel opportunities that are created in this continuous blooming dynamics. Affordances play a fundamental role in the evolution of the biosphere, for organisms can exploit them for new morphological and behavioral adaptations achieved by heritable variations and selection. This way, the opportunities offered by affordances are then actualized as ever novel adaptations. In this paper, we maintain that affordances elude a formalization that relies on set theory: we argue that it is not possible to apply set theory to affordances; therefore, we cannot devise a set-based mathematical theory to deduce the diachronic evolution of the biosphere.

Indexed as

affordancediachronic evolution of the biosphereincompletenessset theory

Identifiers

PMID34828165
PMCPMC8621738

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.