The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms
by Ho, Mae-WanEdition: 3rd
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 2008-08-15
Publisher(s): World Scientific Pub Co Inc
Other versions by this Author
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Summary
"This highly unusual book began as a serious inquiry into Schrodinger's question, "What is life?", and as a celebration of life itself, It takes the reader on a voyage ofdiscovery 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 much-enlarged third edition includes new findings on the central role of biological water in organizing living processes; it also completes the author's novel theory of the organism and its applications in ecology, physiology and brain science."--BOOK JACKET.
Table of Contents
| Preface to Third Edition | p. v |
| Preface to Second Edition | p. xi |
| Preface to First Edition | p. xv |
| What is it to be Alive? | p. 1 |
| The 'Big' Questions in Science | p. 1 |
| The Physicochemical Underpinnings of Life | p. 3 |
| On Being Alive | p. 6 |
| Do Organisms Contravene the Second Law? | p. 13 |
| Life and the Second Law | p. 13 |
| The Laws of Thermodynamics | p. 14 |
| Entropy as Disorder | p. 18 |
| Is Maxwell's Demon in the Living System? | p. 20 |
| Can the Second Law Cope with Organised Complexity? | p. 24 |
| The Space-Time Structure of Living Processes | p. 24 |
| The Second Law Restated | p. 29 |
| Quantum Molecular Machines in Living Systems | p. 35 |
| Energy Flow and Living Cycles | p. 38 |
| The Probability of Life | p. 38 |
| Energy Flow and Material Cycles | p. 39 |
| Dynamic Molecular Order from Energy Flow | p. 41 |
| A Theorem of Chemical Cycles | p. 45 |
| Coupled Cycles and the Steady State | p. 49 |
| The Many-Fold Coupled Cycles of Life | p. 53 |
| Energy Storage in the Biosphere | p. 56 |
| How to Catch a Falling Electron | p. 62 |
| Life and Negative Entropy | p. 62 |
| Free Energy and Entropy | p. 64 |
| Why Don't Organisms Live by Eating Diamonds? | p. 68 |
| What Kind of 'Engine' is the Organism? | p. 74 |
| 'Stored Energy' versus 'Free Energy' | p. 76 |
| Towards a Thermodynamics of Organised Complexity | p. 79 |
| The Continuing Enigma of Organisms | p. 79 |
| The Organism as an Energy Storage Domain | p. 80 |
| Energy Storage and Mobilisation is Symmetrical | p. 84 |
| Thermodynamics of the Steady State versus Thermodynamics of Organised Complexity | p. 87 |
| Superposition of Cyclic Non-Dissipative Processes Coupled to Dissipative Processes | p. 88 |
| The Principle of Internal Entropy Compensation and the Zero-Entropy Ideal of the Organism | p. 90 |
| Dynamic Closure and the Autonomy of Organisms | p. 93 |
| Exquisite Sensitivity and Freedom | p. 93 |
| Sustainable Systems as Organisms | p. 97 |
| Zero-Entropy Model of the Organism and Sustainable Systems | p. 97 |
| Zero-Entropy Model versus the Dominant Model of Infinite Growth | p. 100 |
| Space-time Differentiation, Biodiversity, Productivity, Resilience and Carrying Capacity | p. 105 |
| Deconstructing Money and the Bubble Economy | p. 106 |
| The Seventy-Three Octaves of Nature's Music | p. 109 |
| Reduction versus Integration | p. 109 |
| Electricity and Magnetism | p. 110 |
| The Electromagnetic Theory of Light and Matter | p. 112 |
| Molecular and Intermolecular Forces | p. 117 |
| Coherent Excitations of the Body Electric | p. 124 |
| Collective versus Statistical Behaviour | p. 124 |
| Non-Equilibrium Transitions to Dynamic Order | p. 126 |
| Coherent Excitations of the Body Electric | p. 128 |
| The Solid-State Cell | p. 132 |
| 'The Cataclysmic Violence of Homogenisation' | p. 132 |
| Molecular Resonance Recognition | p. 135 |
| Implications for Cell Biology | p. 139 |
| Self-Assembly and Living Organisation | p. 140 |
| The Meticulously Organised Cell | p. 141 |
| 'Life is a Little Electric Current' | p. 148 |
| Electrodynamical Through and Through | p. 148 |
| Electron Energies Band Together | p. 152 |
| The Body Electric Flows and Flows | p. 154 |
| How Coherent is the Organism? The Heartbeat of Health | p. 158 |
| How to Detect Coherence | p. 158 |
| Biological Rhythms and Coherence | p. 159 |
| Complex Music of the Healthy Heart | p. 161 |
| Fractal Heart Rhythm | p. 164 |
| Distinguishing Healthy from Unhealthy Heart Rhythms with Fractal Analysis | p. 166 |
| Multifractal Heart Rhythm | p. 169 |
| The Heart is Not a Solo Player in the Quantum Jazz of Life | p. 169 |
| Happiness is a Heartbeat Away | p. 171 |
| The Coherent Heart Rhythm of Positive Emotion | p. 172 |
| The Emotional and Physiological Modes of the Heart | p. 174 |
| Feeling Good is Good for You | p. 176 |
| The Heart is Far More Than a Mechanical Pump | p. 176 |
| How Coherent is the Organism? Sensitivity to Weak Electromagnetic Fields | p. 179 |
| Organisms Sensitive to Very Weak Electromagnetic Fields | p. 179 |
| Evidence of Non-Thermal Effects of Microwave Radiation from Mobile Phones | p. 181 |
| How Magnetic Field Can Affect Organisms | p. 183 |
| Life is All the Colours of the Rainbow in a Worm | p. 192 |
| Light and Living Matter | p. 192 |
| The Light That Through the Green Fuse | p. 192 |
| Long-Range Communication Between Cells and Organisms | p. 196 |
| Where do Biophotons Come From? | p. 201 |
| Life is All the Colours of the Rainbow in a Worm | p. 206 |
| The Liquid Crystalline Organism | p. 212 |
| The Mystery of Artemia - Life Without Energy Flow | p. 212 |
| Living versus Non-Living Matter | p. 213 |
| Liquid Crystals and Organisms | p. 215 |
| Rainbow Colours and Liquid Crystals | p. 219 |
| The Dynamic Liquid Crystalline Whole | p. 220 |
| Liquid Crystals and Pattern Determination | p. 222 |
| Crystal Consciousness | p. 228 |
| The Liquid Crystalline Continuum and Body Consciousness | p. 228 |
| Oriented Collagens and Intercommunication | p. 230 |
| Oriented Collagens and Body Consciousness | p. 235 |
| Crystal Memory | p. 236 |
| Coupled Body and Brain Consciousness | p. 237 |
| The Unity of Conscious Experience | p. 238 |
| Quantum Coherence and Conscious Experience | p. 239 |
| Liquid Crystalline Water | p. 246 |
| Weird and Wonderful Water | p. 246 |
| Two-States Model of Water | p. 248 |
| The Chaplin Model | p. 249 |
| Model Fits Well with Data | p. 250 |
| Colloid Crystals | p. 252 |
| First Sightings of Structured Water | p. 253 |
| Seeing is Believing | p. 254 |
| Positive Electricity Zaps Up and Down Water Chains | p. 256 |
| Liquid Crystalline Acupuncture Meridians Revisited | p. 260 |
| Collagen Organising Proton Cables | p. 261 |
| Fire and Water | p. 263 |
| Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation Mediated by Liquid Crystalline Water? | p. 266 |
| Quantum Entanglement and Coherence | p. 269 |
| Nature is Quantum, Really | p. 269 |
| Wave-Particle Duality: Which Slit Did the Buckyball Go Through? | p. 272 |
| Quantum Superposition and the Uncertainty Principle | p. 275 |
| The EPR Paradox and Quantum Entanglement | p. 277 |
| Quantum Coherence | p. 280 |
| Quantum Coherence and Living Organisation | p. 282 |
| The Universe is Quantum and Coherent | p. 287 |
| Quantum Coherence Survives Weak Measurements | p. 291 |
| Universal Quantum Entanglement | p. 298 |
| Ignorance of the External Observer | p. 302 |
| The Meaning of Life and All That | p. 302 |
| Is Entropy Subjective? | p. 302 |
| Entropy and Information | p. 306 |
| Information, Entropy, Order and Knowledge | p. 308 |
| Ignorance of the External Observer | p. 313 |
| Time and Freewill | p. 317 |
| There is No Glass Bead Game | p. 317 |
| Bergson's 'Pure Duration' | p. 317 |
| Whitehead's 'Organism' and Bohm's 'Implicate Order' | p. 321 |
| Space-time Structure and Quantum Theory | p. 324 |
| Organisms as Coherent Space-Time Structures | p. 327 |
| Organic Space-Time and Fractal Space-Time | p. 328 |
| Determinism and Freewill | p. 330 |
| References | p. 337 |
| Subject Index | p. 367 |
| Author Index | p. 375 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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