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.

Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, broadcaster, and bestselling author of more than twenty books. 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.

— Steven Poole, Guardian

— Clive Cookson, Financial Times

— Timo Hannay, Nature

— Lewis Dartnell, Times (UK)

— Bianca Nogrady, Sydney Morning Herald

— Richard Joyner, Times Higher Education

— Liz Else, New Scientist

— Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford

— Robyn Williams

— David Deutsch

— George F.R. Ellis, University of Cape Town

— Denis Noble, University of Oxford

— Michael Levin, Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University

— Michael Berry, HH Wills Physics Laboratory

— Charles Jencks, author of "The Garden of Cosmic Speculation”

— Mikhail Prokopenko, University of Sydney

— Tushna Commissariat, Physics World

— J. S. Schwartz, emeritus, CUNY College of Staten Island, Choice

— Jim Al-Khalili, BBC Science Focus

— Daily Galaxy

— ESSSAT News & Reviews

— Penn Book Center

— Jeremy Kirby and Quincy McCabe, The Quarterly Review of Biology