Description
Book SynopsisSeventy years ago, Erwin Schrödinger posed a profound question: ''What is life, and how did it emerge from non-life?'' This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology? What could have led the first replicating molecules up such a path? Now, developments in the emerging field of ''systems chemistry'' are unlocking the problem. Addy Pross shows how the different kind of stability that operates among replicating molecules results in a tendency for chemical systems to become more complex and acquire the properties of life. Strikingly, he demonstrates that Darwinian evolution is the biological expression of a deeper, well-defined chemical concept: the whole story from replicating molecules to complex life is one continuous process governed by an underlying physical principle. The gulf between biology and the physical sciences is finally becoming bridged.This new edition includes an Epilogue describing developments in the concepts of fundamental forms of stability discussed in the book, and their profound implications.Oxford Landmark Science books are ''must-read'' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.
Trade ReviewIn this inspiring book, Pross provides an engaging account of the view that systems chemistry can bridge the hitherto unassailable abiogenic/biogenic divide. In a carefully constructed, almost forensic, analysis, he confronts crucial issues, such as the conceptual gulf between the biochemist's chicken and egg problem...and the fundamental role of dynamic kinetic stability in the process of life. * Ben Mepham, The Biologist *
Table of ContentsPrologue 1: Living things are so very strange 2: Historic quest for a theory of life 3: Understanding 'understanding' 4: Stability and instability 5: The knotty origin of life problem 6: Biology's crisis of identity 7: Biology is chemistry 8: What is Life? References and Notes Index
