Every Life Is on Fire - by Jeremy England (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Why are we alive? Most things in the universe aren't. And if you trace the evolutionary history of plants and animals back far enough, you will find that, at some point, neither were we. Scientists have wrestled with this problem for centuries, and no one has been able to offer a credible theory. But in 2013, at just 30 years old, biophysicist Jeremy England published a paper that has utterly upended the ongoing study of life's origins. In Every Life Is On Fire, he describes, for the first time, his highly publicized theory known as dissipative adaptation."--Publisher's description.

Book Synopsis

A preeminent physicist unveils a field-defining theory of the origins and purpose of life.
Why are we alive? Most things in the universe aren't. And everything that is alive traces back to things that, puzzlingly, weren't.
For centuries, the scientific question of life's origins has confounded us. But in Every Life Is on Fire, physicist Jeremy England argues that the answer has been under our noses the whole time, deep within the laws of thermodynamics. England explains how, counterintuitively, the very same forces that tend to tear things apart assembled the first living systems.
But how life began isn't just a scientific question. We ask it because we want to know what it really means to be alive. So England, an ordained rabbi, uses his theory to examine how, if at all, science helps us find purpose in a vast and mysterious universe.
In the tradition of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Every Life Is on Fire is a profound testament to how something can come from nothing.

Review Quotes

"A unique project that proposes to build a metaphorical bridge between the richness of mythic language and the precision of physical theory. Somewhere below this bridge flow the waters in which biological life first evolved and upon which England is an ecumenical-physicist river guide."--David Krakauer, president and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems, Santa Fe Institute

"Illuminating insights into the physics of life."--Kirkus

"In this sparklingly original book, Jeremy England tackles perhaps the biggest scientific question of all -- what is life, and how did it emerge from inanimate matter? It's a delight to read, not only for its charming content, but, because, much like the Hebrew scriptures interwoven throughout the text, the prose flows with a poetic rhythm. I couldn't put it down."--Ard Louis, University of Oxford

About the Author

Jeremy England is senior director in artificial intelligence at GlaxoSmithKline, principal research scientist at Georgia Tech, and the former Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot career development associate professor of physics at MIT. He was a Rhodes scholar, a Hertz fellow, and named one of Forbes "30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Science." He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.