THE RAINBOW AND THE WORM
The Physics of Organisms
(2nd Edition)
by Mae-Wan Ho (The Open University, UK)
This highly unusual book is a serious inquiry into Schrödinger'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
Readership: Sixth form and undergraduate students in physics and
biology; biophysics, biochemistry and quantum mechanics undergraduates.
"... 'what is life?' Mae-Wan Ho presents an interconnected system of proposals, experimental results and conjectures which go a large way towards providing an entirely new answer to this question. It is based on research which is mainstream in its theoretical physical foundations, though innovatory in some of its techniques. This makes the book highly important, and if she is right it would be revolutionary."
Reviews of the 1st Edition
"Mae-Wan Ho's book provides a very original survey of how biology may be linked to physics through the concepts of coherence and of coupled processes. Although it is deeply serious, the writing has a pleasant touch of gaiety, due, I think, to the author's sense of excitement in the central problem: What constitutes 'being alive'?"
K G Denbigh
Professor of Physical Chemistry
Queen Elizabeth College, London |
"The layman may not understand half of this book, but he will understand more than he expects to or may feel he has any right to. The author, whether discussing 'quantum-entanglement', or 'energy-flow', 'dynamic order' or life as 'collective response to weak signals', has the gift of making the reader dream."
P N Furbank
Emeritus Professor of English, Open University |
"The book is recommended to all scientists who are interested in understanding life. It shows that life is more than a complex chemical reaction and, written by an author who understands life not only through the narrow tube of our ratio, that life is worth living with loving care. The book can be easily understood, because it is written in such a way that the basic scientific terms are repeated step by step before they are used for discussing the essential questions. Fifty years after Schrödinger's "What is Life?", this book is a worthy instalment, since it intensifies the original matter of Schrödinger."
Fritz-Albert Popp
International Institute of Biophysics
Kaiserslautern, Germany |
"... an excellent introduction to the more physically motivated approaches to understanding biological complexity. And there's not a gel in sight."
Douglas B Kell
Trends in Biomedical Sciences |
"It is high time a good book was available to not only teach biologists some physics, particularly bioenergetics, but make them sit up and think a bit more deeply about it. This little volume is more readable than other drier and much weightier books on the subject. Herein lies perhaps the merit of Mae-Wan Ho's book."
| Cell Biology International |
"The book is an expression of Mae-Wan Ho's belief that science is 'an adventure of the free, enquiring spirit which thrives not so much on answers as [on] unanswered questions'. The book is the coming together of many highly exciting ideas of contemporary physics in what appears to be a collage — but one that draws on a range of experiment and theory, and illuminates Ho's definition of life as a 'process of being an organizing whole'."
"... a fascinating excursion towards and beyond the limits of physical science fifty years on from Schrödinger's classic."
| David Lloyd, Binary - Computing in Microbiology |
"... [the author] clearly understands the "whys" of the world at a depth and breadth which no one else approaches ... clinical medicine requires this kind of insight ..."
| Walter Bortz, MD, author of Dare to be 100 |
"... a truly stimulating and beautifully written book, full of new perspectives and researchable ideas."
| Ervin Laszlo, author of The Whispering Pond |
"... a remarkably eclectic work, joyously written and a joy to read. I certainly learned a lot from it."
Geoffrey Sewell, author of
Quantum Physics of Collective Phenomena |
| 304pp |
Pub. date: Aug 1998 |
