Every Life Is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things - Hardcover

by Jeremy England (Author)

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.

Author Biography

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.