Main description:

Understanding how simple molecules have given rise to the complex biochemical systems and processes of contemporary biology is widely regarded as one of chemistry's great unsolved questions. There are numerous theories as to the origins of life, the majority of which draw on the idea that DNA and nucleic acids are the central dogma of biology. The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics takes a systems-based approach to the origin and evolution of complex life. Readers will gain a novel understanding of physiologic evolution and the limits to our current understanding: why biology remains descriptive and non-predictive, as well as offering new opportunities for understanding relationships between physics and biology in the origins of biological life at the cellular-molecular level.

Contents:

The Singularity of Nature; Bohm Meets Bacon; The Cell, Evolution, and Occam's Razor; CP Snow's 'Two Cultures' Condition is Resolved by the Singularity; The Heart is not just a Pump: The Brain is not your only 'Mind'; Why You Must Transcend Space-Time in Order to Understand Consciousness; The Evolutionary Significance of Homeostasis; Networking from the Cell to Quantum Mechanics as Consciousness; On Cellular Cooperativity as the Basis for Moral Behavior; Aging, Senescence and Death as a Systematic Breakdown in Cell-Cell Communication; A Holistic Perspective on Consciousness; Cell Division Seen as the Symmetry Breaking of the Singularity/Big Bang; Minding the Gap, or The Unicell Fills the Gap Between Proximate and Ultimate Causation; The Big Bang: Vectoral Origin of The Periodic Table and Evolution; The Physiological and Evolutionary Significance of Deuterostomy; We are all denizens of Gaia; Cell-Cell Signaling, the Energy Flow from the Big Bang to Civilization; The physics of biology conforms to the Singularity; Foundational Physicochemical Pinciples Drive Human Economics; Singularity, Life, and Mind: New Wave Organicism; Conclusion: The Singularity Unites the Cosmos