Fritjof Capra is a theoretical high-energy physicist, author, and writer of the screenplay for the film MINDWALK. Born in Vienna, Austria on February 1, 1939, he received his Ph.D. on the gravitational collapse of neutron stars from the University of Vienna in 1966 where he studied with Werner Heisenberg. He taught and researched theoretical high-energy physics at Orsay in Paris from 1966-1968, the University of California in Santa Cruz from 1968-1970, Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre, and at the Imperial College in London. Capra founded and served as Director of the Elmwood Institute, Berkeley, which is dedicated to nurturing new ecological visions and applying them to current social, economic and environmental problems. He has published many technical papers and lectured extensively on the philosophical implications of modern science. He does research at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Su biografía
  http://www.fritjofcapra.net/ (Homepage)

Su trabajo

Capra's whole approach is based on the premise that earlier schools of science falsely attempted to force their subjects into mechanistic, easily quantifiable models, in opposition to the holistic awareness of today's scientific revolutionaries. Systems thinking and fractal geometry replace traditional analytical tools and methods.

In biological terms, this means abandoning the traditional emphasis on the cell as a fundamental building block of life. Instead, the modern cell emerges as a symbiotic partnership between a number of formerly independent entities, now playing the roles of nucleus, mitochondria, ribosomes, chloroplasts, and so forth. Indeed, the emphasis on cooperation is a keynote of Capra's vision.

The Gaia hypothesis, in which Earth itself is seen as a single self-regulating biological entity, plays a large role in his vision. Likewise, he believes that the Darwinian vision of struggle for survival aided by chance mutations is refuted by the discovery that microorganisms can in effect cooperate by passing genetic material from one to another across species lines--a discovery that he feels calls into question the entire notion of separate species. But Capra pushes his thesis too eagerly and with too little attention to mundane details. A reader up on the subject will catch him in innumerable small errors (for example, he seems unaware that most biologists see modern apes not as human ancestors but as collateral descendants of a common ancestor).

• Mas sobre su obra

Modelos informáticos de cognición

http://www.fritjofcapra.net/ (Homepage)

http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/capra_0.html (Chapter 8 of The Turning Point)

http://www.intuition.org/txt/capra.htm (The emerging of new culture)

http://www.freedom-here-and-now.com/capra.html (A Systemic Analysis of International Terrorism)

http://www.shotokai.cl/otras_artes/165_em_.html (The thao of physics)