The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life by Paul Davies (PDF)

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Physics World Book of the Year A Financial Times, Sunday Times, and Telegraph Best Science Book of the Year 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. From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, 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.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Brilliantly vivid. . . . The big idea is that . . . understanding the information flow in organisms might be the missing part of our scientific jigsaw puzzle. The informational approach, in Davies’s elegant and lucid exposition, is extremely promising.” — Steven Poole ― Guardian“Boundary-transcending. . . . Davies claims that life’s defining characteristics are better understood in terms of information. . . . With apologies to Charles Darwin, there is grandeur in this view of life.” — Timo Hannay ― Nature“Important and imaginative.” — Clive Cookson ― Financial Times“Wonderful. . . . Davies is a lucid writer and master storyteller. . . . Truly mind-blowing. . . . This is a cracking read.” — Lewis Dartnell ― Times (UK)“Fascinating. . . . This book is no lightweight holiday read you can laze through.” — Bianca Nogrady ― Sydney Morning Herald“A dizzying tour de force.” — Richard Joyner ― Times Higher Education“Explaining one of the oldest questions—what is life?—is physicist Davies’s quest. . . . He searches for answers beyond the known, venturing into a place with no name.” — Liz Else ― New Scientist”Davies’s lucid writing on this emerging scientific area is just what the pop-sci reader ordered. He is the perfect host to this admittedly dizzying journey, as he spins yarns of quantum demons, double-headed worms and everything in-between.” — Tushna Commissariat ― Physics World“Davies narrates a gripping new drama in science, in which the plot is the story of life and the leading actor is information. With his characteristic blend of erudition and clarity, he brings together some of the most rapidly advancing knowledge in physics and technology to show how information controls biology. If you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this.” — Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford“This is one of the most exciting books I have read in years. Davies celebrates a significant anniversary with a demonically brilliant investigation of a fundamental question that only the very latest science and philosophy can deal with. Now we have a view from the master that’s as thrilling as it is satisfying. Superb.” — Robyn Williams“Davies takes us on a fascinating tour of what is known about what life is. Along the way he speculates interestingly about what may become known. His theme, drawn from Darwin, Schrödinger, Turing, Gödel, Shannon, and von Neumann, is that what separates life from non-life is *information.* But how? Exploring that question illuminates biology by revealing its deep roots in physics, mathematics, and computer science.” — David Deutsch“In this characteristically clearly written and engaging book, ranging from physics to biology and evolutionary theory to neuroscience, Davies strongly makes the case that at its core, life is about information flows.” — George F.R. Ellis, University of Cape Town“Davies is a courageous explorer of the boundaries of what we can know about our world. This book makes his explorations available to all who enjoy pushing those boundaries. Written with a light entertaining touch, even the most abstruse science acquires the clarity of exposition for which the author is justly renowned.” — Denis Noble, University of Oxford“A tour-de-force. . . . The Demon in the Machine is simultaneously rigorous, state-of-the-art, and highly readable—very hard to put down.” — Michael Levin, Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University“Davies always probes the deepest questions in science. Here, addressing the deepest of all—Schrödinger’s What is Life?—he tells us what life is: matter plus information—beyond the laws of physics, but compatible with them. To elaborate this thesis, he deploys his trademark talent: getting to the heart of the most abstruse and technical aspects of science (biology as well as physics), without jargon and with down-to-earth analogies.” — Michael Berry, HH Wills Physics Laboratory“This creative demon shadows DNA and the promise of quantum computing, answering some basic questions. What is consciousness, why is life so good at predicting where it might go next? The bridge connecting fundamental physics, biology, and the most advanced labs of computation is what Davies calls information patterns. He shows how it organizes for top-down creativity, and thereby holds off the grim reaper of entropy. With striking insight, and metaphors that illuminate the landscape of science today, Davies once again becomes our guide to the near future.” — Charles Jencks, author of “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation”“The Demon in the Machine encompasses some of the most intriguing and unsolved mysteries of the universe: the existence of an arrow of time imprinted on the cosmos, and the emergence of life itself. Davies’s crisp but rich narrative succeeds in untangling various highly complex ideas and processes, while fluently and intelligently setting out its own arrow of argument.” — Mikhail Prokopenko, University of Sydney”This work analyzes the properties of life from the perspective of atomic physics, arguing that the very nature of living things allows them to defy the second fundamental law of physics: namely, that there is a ‘tendency towards degeneration and disorder.’… Along with treating the question ‘What is life?’ this book explains the fundamental principles of quantum physics, making a very complex subject more understandable.” — J. S. Schwartz, emeritus, CUNY College of Staten Island ― Choice”This book is really about whether a physicist can define what life is, and the living systems that are far from equilibrium, yet maintain high-order…It’s one of those books where you read a few pages, then you lean back and think and go, ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way.'” — Jim Al-Khalili ― BBC Science Focus”Davies offers a similar message . . . : information, like energy, has the ability to animate matter. ‘In each and every one of us lies a message,’ writes Davies. ‘It is inscribed in an ancient code, its beginnings lost in the mists of time. Decrypted, the message contains instructions on how to make a human being. Nobody wrote the message; nobody invented the code. They came into existence spontaneously.’” ― Daily Galaxy”Davies is struck by the way living organisms consistently resist the ravages of entropy that all forms of inanimate matter are subject to and argues that there must be some non-physical principle allowing living matter to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This non-physical principle is information. Throughout the book, Davies explores all the different ways that information is an essential component of biological processes, especially at the cellular and molecular levels.” ― ESSSAT News & Reviews”For Davies, life is a data processing system. That is his demon from the machine. It is one of the books where you read a couple of pages; you then lean back and go and think, ‘Oh, I had not thought of it like that.'” ― Penn Book Center”The Demon in the Machine will have broad appeal. Experts looking to make their way from disciplinary silos, and better understand the promise of scientific thinking as it relates to information, will find what they are looking for. At the same time, novices who want to better understand the current state of science will be aptly rewarded.” — Jeremy Kirby and Quincy McCabe ― The Quarterly Review of Biology About the Author Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, broadcaster, and best-selling author. A winner of the prestigious Templeton Prize, he is Regents’ Professor of Physics and director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Recently I had a conversation with Oxford physicist Andrew Briggs that might explain why some people will be uncomfortable with this book.Andrew said, “Paul Davies likes it when I speak at his conferences because Paul always asks me to come and talk about what I do NOT know – and most scientists prefer to stick with what they do know.”“Demon in the Machine” is a book about what we DON’T know… sprinkled with hints pointing the way to solutions.“Demon” in the title refers to an idea in physics called Maxwell’s Demon who is a tiny sentient entity who in theory could reverse the direction of entropy if he could open or close a door, keeping hot molecules on one side and letting cold ones escape to the other.If you send a text message to a friend on a smart phone, and never type any words but ONLY select from choices the autosuggest offers you, you are acting like Maxwell’s demon. You are making a very finite set of choices, but doing so purposefully. If you try it, you’ll find you can construct pretty elaborate and coherent sentences that way – where the phone itself would only produce automated gibberish.It is precisely this kind of decision behavior that defines biology itself in the generation of information. The origin of information is arguably the #1 unsolved problem in biology; and it’s not just the question of life’s origin; it’s also the central question of evolution itself and the nature of the mind.That’s because evolution is not a function of random copying errors and selection, but highly sophisticated sensory networks, expression of genes, epigenetic changes, and exchanges of DNA that are contextually adapted to the challenges at hand. Only in the last couple years has the public started to hear about this shift.Paul Davies is what I call an “Interdisciplinary Explainer” – someone who is 1) immersed in many different disciplines and has deep knowledge of all of them, and 2) is adept at explaining them in plain English and endeavors to find commonalities between them.I spent a few hours with some grad students at Arizona State University in the ASU Beyond Program, which Paul Directs. I immediately noticed that while all of them were in wildly different specialties, each patiently took the time to explain their work in plain English. This is not typical, but it indicates the culture Davies creates both at the school and in the book.My experience is that the Interdisciplinary Explainer, once you find him, will carry you further in one hour than most professors take you in 20 hours. This book delves into many topics of biology – the chapter on cancer is absolutely fascinating, and Davies canvasses dozens of conceptual models from physics; explores cellular automata and algorithms; new trends in evolution; questions about consciousness and perception; competing theories of quantum behavior in cells.And near the end he suggests that we may have to kill a 500-year-old sacred cow: The notion that all scientific laws are universal. Yes, it’s a tremendous convenience to assume that gravity works the same everywhere in the universe; it may even be true. (Or not.)But what is certainly true is that biological systems are linguistic and linguistic systems are always contextual. The sequence 1001001 (or its equivalent in DNA code or other biological signaling systems) can literally mean a million different things in a million different situations.People have been raising such questions for decades, but for mainstream science to fully embrace this will be a first-class paradigm shift – as big a shift as quantum mechanics or relativity.This is why I anticipate a number of complaints about this book – mostly from people who haven’t gone deep enough to appreciate the importance of what he’s saying:1) Very few people will be familiar with even the majority of topics he talks about here; this book takes work to read and will force you to think. It crosses ten different disciplines.2) This book does not cater to the reductionist biases of the typical science reader who likes Richard Dawkins or Lawrence Krauss. If you’re a fan of those guys, Davies will not antagonize you but he will challenge your thinking.3) Davies understates, in my opinion, the gravity of what he is saying. Most questions about information in biology are far from answered, but if he’s right 25% of the time, we’re in for some radical revisions of basic science itself. But whether he says so loudly or softly, it’s going to make people squirm. Especially those who feel most scientific controversies have been settled.My favorite chapter? It’s a tossup between the one on bird navigation and the one on cancer.Cancer: Davies received a grant to take a physicist’s novel and inquiring approach to the causes of cancer, starting with a blank sheet of paper. Most cancer research rehashes the same assumptions and his team came up with fresh insights. He makes a persuasive case that cancer is a very very old, preprogrammed response to stress.Bird navigation: Davies pieces together research that suggests that birds may be able to literally see, in some sense, lines of the earth’s magnetic field; this is why Arctic Terns can fly 80,000 miles a year and never end up on the wrong continent. Davies gives you enough details for you to look into the matter yourself and make up your own mind.Again, whether he’s right or wrong he will make you think.

⭐At about the halfway point, I was prepared to give this book a solid four out of five stars. I found the notion that information can be tracked and quantified in biological systems using computational models to be very interesting, and I certainly agree that common regulatory motifs are used over and over in biology. I thought these early chapters were preparation for the novel insights that would come in the latter half. But unfortunately when Davies starts talking about morphogenesis, epigenetics and cancer it’s clear he’s out of his depth. This portion was a steady stream of factoids but the information-centric narrative was lost and is never fully recovered. He also predominantly cites work of people he knows rather than leaders in the field. For example, when discussing planaria regeneration he makes no mention of work by Peter Reddien or Alejandro Sanchez-Alvarado. Understanding the logic of information processing networks in biology is a worthy goal for the 21st century, but I can’t say this book contains any information that will help us much in getting there.

⭐Having some afternoons of blissful sleep while trying to read this. The distinctions between a Turing machine and a Von Neumann machine is really not what I was expecting. Perhaps it will get better? A work in progress.Edit: It gets better. The ideas on cancer are really mind blowing.

⭐Davies used to write books for laymen, but this time he gets very technical. It is an advanced and well-written book on state-of-the-art science. But to me, it was a disappointment, because I’m moderately interested in technicalities. Most of the book is like this:”In response to the arrival of a signal from the body of the neuron, the gates open and allow sodium ions to flow from the outside to the inside, thereby reversing the voltage. Next, a different set of ion channels open to allow potassium ions to flow the other way—from the inside to the outside—restoring the original voltage. The polarity reversal typically lasts for only a few thousandths of a second. This transient disturbance triggers the same process in an adjacent section of the axon’s membrane, and that in turn sets off the next section, and so on. The signal thus ripples down the axon towards another neuron.” (pp. 196-97).Davies recounts the history of science, including developments in mathematics, quantum physics, information theory, brain research, etc. But the average hyper-intellectual would already know most of the science history. The book is utterly demanding, and the average person would experience it as tedious. The author’s central concept is this:LIFE = MATTER + INFORMATIONComparatively, the medieval version is like this:LIFE = MATTER + SPIRITHere, spirit is what God breathed into Adam’s nostrils. On this view, we are connected to a divine transcendental mind through a kind of umbilical cord of spirit. Our conscious awareness has an otherworldly origin. This actually provides an explanation of sorts. As I see it, Davies’s equation does not. It could provide an explanation for life going on “in the dark”, without conscious awareness. But since life goes on “in the light”, it has not sufficient explanatory power. It does not help to say that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” and that “consciousness is an emergent property”.

⭐I enjoyed the thesis, that biology = physics + information but sometimes it was being assumed, sometimes to be proved.Then I wasted a whole morning because fig 11 is seriously wrong: Eventually I found the original academic publication: several arrows are mis-drawn reversing DE and CE and GF and missing a reverse link on FG . Of course we are just general readers and don’t deserve accuracy.

⭐Davies asks the question, ‘What is Life?’ echoing Schrödinger’s 1943 Dublin lectures with the same title, and like Schrödinger, he believes that standard physics is unable to provide the answer. He claims that we will need a ‘new physics’, and Davies has two suggestions for how this might emerge: Maxwell’s demon, and information.Maxwell’s famous demon chooses between fast and slow molecules of gas without doing work, thereby defying the second law of thermodynamics. Life also appears to defy the second law – it creates order out of disorder – so Davies goes in search of ‘demons’ in biology which might be capable of playing this trick, focussing on quantum processes in the cell.His first ‘demon’ is quantum tunnelling, which ‘greases the wheels of life’s energy-generating machine’ (the synthesis of ATP); another is the ability of quantum particles to be ‘in two places at once’ which features in the physics of photosynthesis. Both of these processes are fundamental to life as we know it, and the fact that quantum effects are involved is undoubtedly significant, but none of this proves that life is a quantum phenomenon. Anticipating this argument, Davies turns it round by suggesting that if a quantum effect exists which could help life, then ‘we might expect evolution to stumble across it and select it.’ He could be right.What Davies is doing here is looking for ‘magic bullets’ to explain life, and his second one is information. This idea emerged after the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953, and received extra impetus following the deciphering of the human genome between 1990 and 2003. Genes define the inherited characteristics of all living things, and we now know that they are encoded information. It follows that information is essential to life, which leads some people to make the further claim that life is information. Davies pursues this rabbit down any number of rabbit-holes, with varying success. He writes well, and it’s an exciting ride, but not altogether convincing. The information in the genes is acted on by processes in the cell: it is these processes which enable life – the information is not active.Davies is good at covering all the options, but perhaps he should have put more effort into clarifying the distinction between data, information and instructions in the cell. Sometimes the genes are described as information, at other times as instructions – they can’t be both (although they can be treated as data, he’s right about that). Meanwhile statements like ‘in the biological world, the program is the data, and vice versa’ are too glib to provide insight.His quest continues with the origin of life. He makes a useful distinction between two challenges: the first is, how did complex organic molecules self-organise to ‘create’ biology? Nobody knows, so Davies quickly moves on to his second challenge, which is: how did the ‘informational hallmarks’ of life emerge, in particular, the DNA coding scheme? Because of his enthusiasm for information, Davies very much wants to find an answer to this question, but controversy reigns, particularly regarding the probability of life emerging with these properties. On the one hand there are scientists who think that the origin of life was ‘a chemical fluke’ (implying that we are almost certainly alone in the universe). Others believe that life will emerge wherever it has a chance. Davies inclines to the first option.After these intriguing discussions, Davies rather lets the side down with a chapter on consciousness, which is a quagmire of speculation for anybody, even our author. But he redeems himself in the epilogue, by acknowledging that ‘the conceptual gulf between physics and biology is so deep’ that ‘a full explanation of living matter entails something altogether more profound: nothing less than a revision of the nature of physical law itself.’ Davies thinks he has helped us move towards this goal with his quantum demons, and informational complexity – and he challenges his readers to go beyond him.

⭐As a casual reader of science books who strives to keep up with current developments I got something out of this but not what I was expecting. The book weaves in and out of well-established theories in biology and physics attempting to bind an information layer over molecular biology to explain some of the astonishing complexity. The ‘information is physical’ mantra is repeated throughout but without any real attempt at the very obvious question – so where the hell is all this information? If it really is physical and biological activity at the molecular level is responding to a giant network of it there ought to be a detectable imprint. Observations of localised chemical and electrical signalling are the nearest it gets to describing any kind of network. Of course this question has to remain unanswered because nobody has yet come up with any reasoned explanation so my disappointment was largely about the claims made by the publishers (who would have thought it, publishers making exaggerated claims to sell books!). Worth reading for some of the scientific facts and stories drawn in from the history of physics, biology and related studies but overall not particularly supportive of any grand new theory of life.

⭐I have always found Davis’ ideas sound and well worth pursuing. His choice of words ring with the honesty of a person who has been there, done that, and not only has the T Shirt but also the CD. He has intuitively arrived at the same conclusion that David Bohm perceived when he hypothesised the existence of the Implicate Order. Davis and Bohm have both identified the need for the existence of a domain that acts as the formative cause of creation, but in Davis’ view information is a supra physical reality that requires the existence of consciousness as its medium

⭐I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a book so much. The breadth of topics and the mind-blowing content kept me reading, even through the challenging parts. There are some profound ideas in here – in particular, hints about what consciousness might be – but even though the full answers still elude us there is more than a ring of truth about the importance of information science in biological processes. Can’t recommend highly enough.

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