This highly unusual book is a serious inquiry into Schrdinger's question, What is life? , and at the same time a celebration of life itself. It takes the reader on a voyage of discovery through many areas of contemporary physics, from non-equilibrium thermodynamics and quantum optics to liquid crystals and fractals, all necessary for illuminating the problem of life. In the process, the reader is treated to a rare and exquisite view of the organism, gaining novel insights, not only into the physics but also into the poetry and meaning of being alive . This book is intended for all who love the subject.
Contents: What Is It to Be Alive?; Do Organisms Contravene the Second Law?; Can the Second Law Cope with Organized Complexity?; Energy Flow and Living Cycles; How to Catch a Falling Electron; Towards a Thermodynamics of Organized Complexity; The Seventy-Three Octaves of Nature's Music; Coherent Excitation of the Body Electric; How Coherent Is the Organism?; Life is All the Colours of the Rainbow in a Worm; The Liquid Crystalline Organism; Crystal Consciousness; Quantum Entanglement and Coherence; The Ignorance of the External Observer; Time and Freewill.
