Life As No One Knows It
On sale
12th August 2025
Price: £10.99
Selected:
Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349128252
What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short.
Physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. She proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life, inviting us into a world of maverick scientists working without a map, seeking not just answers but better ways to formulate the biggest questions we have about the universe. Rigorous, accessible, and vital, Life As No-One Knows It celebrates the mystery of life and the explanatory power of physics.
‘A fresh take on the age-old questions “Are we alone?” and “Where did we come from?”‘ American Scientist
‘A virtuosos intellectual performance… full of wit, mischief and bursts of insolent brevity’ Simon Ings, Daily Telegraph
‘Provocative and intriguing’ Wall Street Journal
Physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. She proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life, inviting us into a world of maverick scientists working without a map, seeking not just answers but better ways to formulate the biggest questions we have about the universe. Rigorous, accessible, and vital, Life As No-One Knows It celebrates the mystery of life and the explanatory power of physics.
‘A fresh take on the age-old questions “Are we alone?” and “Where did we come from?”‘ American Scientist
‘A virtuosos intellectual performance… full of wit, mischief and bursts of insolent brevity’ Simon Ings, Daily Telegraph
‘Provocative and intriguing’ Wall Street Journal
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Reviews
An honorable addition to a small genre that began with Noble Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger's What Is Life? ... Ingenious
Bracingly original ... This has the potential to be a game changer
Reading Life As No-One Knows It is like engaging in a mind-bending conversation about the biggest questions of all
A virtuoso intellectual performance ... full of wit, mischief and bursts of insolent brevity... Walker shows us that what we call 'life' is but an infinitesimal fraction of all the kinds of like that may arise out of any number of wholly unfamiliar chemistries
A fresh take on the age-old questions 'Are we alone?' and 'Where did we come from?'
With wit and clarity, Walker outlines a radical new approach to bridge the conceptual gap between non-life and life
Provocative and intriguing
A masterfully crafted and engaging account of Assembly Theory. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in fundamental physics, the origins of life, and pursuing a better understanding of the structure underlying all of the universe's creations