Oct 27, 2020
The Demon in the Machine
HOW HIDDEN WEBS OF INFORMATION ARE SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF LIFE
Physics World Book of the Year
A Financial Times, Sunday Times, and Telegraph Best Science Book of the Year
What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery.
In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.
From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine journeys across an astounding landscape of cutting-edge science. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window onto the secret of life itself.
A Financial Times, Sunday Times, and Telegraph Best Science Book of the Year
What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery.
In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.
From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine journeys across an astounding landscape of cutting-edge science. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window onto the secret of life itself.
Steven Poole |
Guardian
“Brilliantly vivid. . . . The big idea is that . . .
understanding the information flow in organisms might be the
missing part of our scientific jigsaw puzzle. The informational
approach, in Davies’s elegant and lucid exposition, is extremely
promising.”
Timo Hannay | Nature
“Boundary-transcending. . . . Davies claims that life’s
defining characteristics are better understood in terms of
information. . . . With apologies to Charles Darwin, there is
grandeur in this view of life.”
Clive Cookson | Financial
Times
“Important and imaginative.”
Lewis Dartnell | Times
(UK)
“Wonderful. . . . Davies is a lucid writer and master
storyteller. . . . Truly mind-blowing. . . . This is a cracking
read.”
Bianca Nogrady | Sydney Morning
Herald
“Fascinating. . . . This book is no lightweight holiday read
you can laze through.”
Richard Joyner | Times Higher
Education
“A dizzying tour de force.”
Liz Else | New
Scientist
“Explaining one of the oldest questions—what is life?—is
physicist Davies’s quest. . . . He searches for answers beyond the
known, venturing into a place with no name.”
Tushna Commissariat | Physics
World
"Davies’s lucid writing on this emerging scientific area is
just what the pop-sci reader ordered. He is the perfect host to
this admittedly dizzying journey, as he spins yarns of quantum
demons, double-headed worms and everything in-between."
Andrew Briggs, University of
Oxford
“Davies narrates a gripping new drama in science, in which the
plot is the story of life and the leading actor is information.
With his characteristic blend of erudition and clarity, he brings
together some of the most rapidly advancing knowledge in physics
and technology to show how information controls biology. If you
want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read
this.”
Robyn Williams
“This is one of the most exciting books I have read in years.
Davies celebrates a significant anniversary with a demonically
brilliant investigation of a fundamental question that only the
very latest science and philosophy can deal with. Now we have a
view from the master that's as thrilling as it is satisfying.
Superb.”
David Deutsch
“Davies takes us on a fascinating tour of what is known about
what life is. Along the way he speculates interestingly about what
may become known. His theme, drawn from Darwin, Schrödinger,
Turing, Gödel, Shannon, and von Neumann, is that what separates
life from non-life is *information.* But how? Exploring that
question illuminates biology by revealing its deep roots in
physics, mathematics, and computer science.”
George F.R. Ellis, University of Cape
Town
“In this characteristically clearly written and engaging book,
ranging from physics to biology and evolutionary theory to
neuroscience, Davies strongly makes the case that at its core, life
is about information flows.”
Denis Noble, University of
Oxford
“Davies is a courageous explorer of the boundaries of what we
can know about our world. This book makes his explorations
available to all who enjoy pushing those boundaries. Written with a
light entertaining touch, even the most abstruse science acquires
the clarity of exposition for which the author is justly
renowned.”
Michael Levin, Allen Discovery Center
at Tufts University
“A tour-de-force. . . . The Demon in the
Machine is simultaneously rigorous, state-of-the-art, and
highly readable—very hard to put down.”
Michael Berry, HH Wills Physics
Laboratory
“Davies always probes the deepest questions in science. Here,
addressing the deepest of all—Schrödinger’s What is
Life?—he tells us what life is: matter plus information—beyond
the laws of physics, but compatible with them. To elaborate this
thesis, he deploys his trademark talent: getting to the heart of
the most abstruse and technical aspects of science (biology as well
as physics), without jargon and with down-to-earth
analogies.”
Charles Jencks, author of "The Garden
of Cosmic Speculation”
“This creative demon shadows DNA and the promise of quantum
computing, answering some basic questions. What is consciousness,
why is life so good at predicting where it might go next? The
bridge connecting fundamental physics, biology, and the most
advanced labs of computation is what Davies calls information
patterns. He shows how it organizes for top-down creativity, and
thereby holds off the grim reaper of entropy. With striking
insight, and metaphors that illuminate the landscape of science
today, Davies once again becomes our guide to the near
future.”
Mikhail Prokopenko, University of
Sydney
“The Demon in the Machine encompasses some of
the most intriguing and unsolved mysteries of the universe: the
existence of an arrow of time imprinted on the cosmos, and the
emergence of life itself. Davies's crisp but rich narrative
succeeds in untangling various highly complex ideas and processes,
while fluently and intelligently setting out its own arrow of
argument.”
J. S. Schwartz, emeritus, CUNY
College of Staten Island | Choice
"This work analyzes the properties of life from the
perspective of atomic physics, arguing that the very nature of
living things allows them to defy the second fundamental law of
physics: namely, that there is a 'tendency towards degeneration and
disorder.'... Along with treating the question 'What is life?' this
book explains the fundamental principles of quantum physics, making
a very complex subject more understandable."
Jim Al-Khalili | BBC Science
Focus
"This book is really about whether a physicist can define what
life is, and the living systems that are far from equilibrium, yet
maintain high-order...It’s one of those books where you read a few
pages, then you lean back and think and go, 'Oh, I hadn’t thought
of it that way.'"
Daily Galaxy
"Davies offers a similar message . . . : information, like
energy, has the ability to animate matter. ‘In each and every one
of us lies a message,’ writes Davies. ‘It is inscribed in an
ancient code, its beginnings lost in the mists of time. Decrypted,
the message contains instructions on how to make a human being.
Nobody wrote the message; nobody invented the code. They came into
existence spontaneously.’"
ESSSAT News & Reviews
"Davies is struck by the way living organisms consistently
resist the ravages of entropy that all forms of inanimate matter
are subject to and argues that there must be some non-physical
principle allowing living matter to defy the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. This non-physical principle is information.
Throughout the book, Davies explores all the different ways that
information is an essential component of biological processes,
especially at the cellular and molecular levels."
Penn Book Center
"For Davies, life is a data processing system. That is his
demon from the machine. It is one of the books where you read a
couple of pages; you then lean back and go and think, 'Oh, I had
not thought of it like that.'"