The Rainbow and the Worm

This highly unusual book began as a serious inquiry into Schrödinger's question, "What is life?", and as a celebration of life itself.

The Rainbow and the Worm 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 much-enlarged third edition includes new findings on the central role of biological water in organising living processes; it also completes the author's novel theory of the organism and its applications in ecology, physiology, and brain science.

This book is intended for all who love the subject, “What Is It to Be Alive?”:

• Do Organisms Contravene the Second Law?
• Can the Second Law Cope with Organised Complexity?
• Energy Flow and Living Cycles
• How to Catch a Falling Electron
• Towards a Thermodynamics of Organised 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