The Demon in the Machine

How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life

By: Paul Davies

Narrated by: Nigel Patterson

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery.

In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.

The Demon in the Machine journeys across an astounding landscape of cutting-edge science. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window onto the secret of life itself.

©2019 Paul Davies (P)2023 Tantor

Thought Provoking

I loved this book. It advances an informational theory of life that I found compelling and elegant. I always thought of life as a means of increasing entropy, but this provides a much deeper understanding of *how* it does so compared to other systems. In the process, it goes through a number of interesting (if somewhat fringe and untested) ideas, such as adaptive mutagenesis, origin of cancer, and consciousness. All very thought provoking.

To be sure, it's not a perfect book. There are a lot of tangential asides (indeed, the whole book seems like a series of tangents), and it's ultimate conclusion is unsatisfying. The author really can't say how information processing through DNA arose, so he concludes that "new laws of physics" (perhaps, that themselves evolve) are needed. That's not a great answer. Still, there are enough good ideas here that it is more than worth reading/listening to.

One of the most important reads of our time

The best book on life as a process of collecting, storing and sharing information… leaves Newtonian physics behind and gives great glimpses of humanity’s future in which a universal understanding of everything is finally mathematically understood. If you aren’t reading Paul Davies you are definitely missing out on some of the most important work of our time. Great narrator too!

Rather deep for average reader but full of new research

I taught biology as a career and have written on what is life. This has now gone beyond even what I was taught and what I have ever thought about. Very interesting but even a bit too deep into quantum phenomenon for me.

Informative and relevant

I had really loved the Erie Silence so I will pretty much read anything by this author. I learned a slew of unexpected things and feel like I came away enriched in my understanding of what life is and is not. I am better informed as the mystery continues to unfold and new discoveries are made and disseminated to the, in the quest to answer one of humanity's greatest questions.