Life : Its Physics and Dynamics

Over the last twenty years we have witnessed an exponential expansion of knowledge in all branches of science. This has led to sub-specialization of disciplines, but this approach has created barriers to the cross-flow of information. The different branches of science are becoming ever more independent of each other. This is certainly true for biology and medicine, whose ties to modern physics have become increasingly tenuous. Although medicine is intended to preserve health and life, there is little emphasis in medical textbooks on what constitutes life itself. Life: Its Physics and Dynamics transfers very basic concepts and theories that bear heavily on our present understanding of the living state from the physical and chemical literature to the biological and medical sciences. The living state of matter is treated, not in isolation, as present textbooks of biochemistry do, but in its relation to surrounding space. Quantum concepts are introduced which are capable of describing living processes as interactions of waves rather than of molecules and macromolecules. The wave concept, with the energy and information it implicitly contains, is better attuned to the overall functioning of living systems and their interaction with the environment. Other basic concepts, such as those of asymmetry, structure, pattern, complexity, and order, which are required for our present day understanding of life processes, are also presented and explained in the context of modern theories of energy organization. Most of the book is about energy, the stuff of all existence, particularly in its electromagnetic form. In this regard, water and protein, the major substrates of life, are viewed as carriers of continuously pulsating electric dipoles. Life, clearly, is electromagnetic in nature. To avoid involvement with their mathematical basis, the theories are presented and discussed in an elementary fashion. This makes the reading of the book accessible to anybody with a high school education even though it is directed to biologists, physicians, and physicists involved in the study of living structures. Book jacket.