The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms [Hardcover]

Mae-Wan Ho (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 9812832599 | ISBN-13: 978-9812832597 | Publication Date: August 6, 2008 | Edition: 3

This unusual book is a serious, in-depth enquiry into Schrodinger's question, "What is Life?" and at the same time, a celebration of life itself. It takes the reader on a voyage of discovery through many areas of contemporary physics from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to quantum optics, all necessary to illuminate the problem of life. In the process, the reader is treated to a rare and exquisite view of the organism, gaining novel insights, not only into the physics, but also "the poetry and meaning of being alive". It is intended for all who love the subject.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

"The layman may not understand half of this book, but he will understand more than he expects to or may feel he has any right to. The author, whether discussing 'quantum-entanglement', or 'energy-flow', 'dynamic order' or life as 'collective response to weak signals', has the gift of making the reader dream." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

"The book is recommended to all scientists who are interested in understanding life. It shows that life is more than a complex chemical reaction and, written by an author who understands life not only through the narrow tube of our ratio, that life is worth living with loving care. The book can be easily understood, because it is written in a way that the basic scientific terms are repeated step by step before they are used for discussing the essential questions. Fifty years after Schrodinger's "What is Life?", this book is a worthy instalment, since it intensifies the original matter of Schrodinger." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company; 3 edition (August 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9812832599
• ISBN-13: 978-9812832597
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,859,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Chemistry > Chemical Physics

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A new look at life from an untraditional scientist, September 2, 2002

By 

"parmavet" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (Paperback)

First of all, Mae-Wan Ho is a woman. The rest of these posts describe the author using "him" and "he," which demonstrates an unfortunate gender stereotype about scientists.

Mae-Wan Ho examines the question, "What is life?" using insights from physics, biology, and chemistry. The author is a professor and research scientist who works outside of the maintream, to say the least. She is best known for her activism against genetic engineering. Her writings take a "holistic" perspective on science; she tries to acheive understanding of the big questions (life, free will, etc) by combining ideas from many different fields.

The book is not flaky or meta-physics. It won't tell you about life energies or world consciousness. It is also not a layman's introduction to any particular established field, as many science books are. Rather, it is a new look at "life," somewhat scientifically rigorous (she is a professional researcher) but presented so that it's accessible to non-scientists. She has a chapter describing how life operates far from the theormodynamic equilibrium, which was very interesting. On the other hand, the final chapter about optics is somewhat far-fetched in my opinion. The book's ideas are generally outside of the mainstream.

All in all, it is a refreshing change from the 10023675th book about superstrings and selfish genes, for those of you who like science books. It's a short book, and worth the few hours it takes to read it. I would highly recommend it as pleasure reading for amateur science fans, or as a book that actual scientists with some time on their hands can read for a new perspective. (I myself am getting my Ph.D. at a top engineering school.) I think it will not appeal to most conservative professional scientists, who tend to reserve their respect for researchers who are experts in a small and established field.

Finally, don't worry about the equations; you can skip them and get the general idea.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Tough Hike Over Worthy Terrain, July 22, 2000

By 

Daniel Murphy "Dan Murphy" (Redmond, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (Paperback)

This book is not for the faint of heart. While I made it through A Brief History of Time, and The Elegant Universe with only a few major hiccups, The Rainbow and the Worm was tough going. I'm a physician, not a physicist, and my college level calculus is very rusty. Staring down pages of equations was not easy.

That being said, this book repeatedly caused me to gaze off into space, absorbed in a totally new way of looking at an old phenomenon. I can't look at living organisms the way that I did before, and I'm indebted to Mae-Wan for this. Scientists are zeroing in on life, and while they strip away myth and mystery, they are replacing them with levels of awe at the complexity and wonder of the living world around us. Despite Ho's failure as a writer that is able to popularize difficult concepts, she is good enough to repeatedly inspire "Ah hah!" in anyone that takes the time.

Finally, I find it interesting that the first two reviewers on Amazon.com referred to Mae-Wan as a male. It robs the book of a bit of its flavor to work all the way through it not realizing that such intense and creative thought is female in origin.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How a living cell overcomes constraints of the Second law of thermodynamics., May 17, 2007

By 

Rama Rao "Rama" (Annandale, VA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (Paperback)

This book is not for the faint hearted! It requires an undergraduate level of thermodynamics, and some working knowledge of biology, and laws of relativity and quantum physics. The author has done her best to write this book to a general reader about physics and biology of life; a monotonous and tedious job to describe in a book of 250 pages. She is influenced by the work of celebrated physicist Erwin Schrodinger and his passion for understanding life. The reader can see Schrodinger's influence throughout this book. Chapter 2 to 6 deals with Schrödinger's concept in explaining how a living cell exports entropy in order to maintain its own entropy at a low level or near zero there by circumventing the constraints of Second law of thermodynamics.

In the second half of the book the author explores various physical and chemical concepts to show how nature keeps cellular entropy production to a minimum. First, the author discusses how the energy transductions in living cells occur, and she determines that heat transfer is not the major form of energy transduction. The biomacromolecules are setup within the cell to near solid state or liquid crystalline like state such that it promotes synchronicity and coherence through electric, electromagnetic and electro mechanical interactions, which are primary source for energy. Coupled electron transfer reactions and other cyclic process that occur in a nested space - time organization within the cell helps minimize entropy since, for a coupled molecular process the entropy production is zero.

Intermolecular dipolar interactions among membrane bound proteins/enzymes, and nucleic acids which act as biological semiconductor devices; and quantum tunneling operate in many electron and proton transfer proteins. DNA and RNA are large dielectric molecules that can sustain coherent excited sates. In chapter 8 - 10 the importance of coherent process that removes biochemical processes away from thermodynamic equilibrium by energy flow have been discussed. The operation of quantum coherence, a coherent state that maximizes both global cohesion and local freedom such that micro domains and nested compartments within the cytosol or nucleus or membrane right down to a single biomacromolecules all functioning autonomously doing different things and at different rates generating flow patterns yet all coupled together in supporting the cellular process. A high degree of coherence, coordination, compartmentalization and regulation of multiple biochemical reactions involving numerous proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and lipids is proposed as a compensating mechanism to minimize entropy. While the author does her best to bring everything in literature together to support a reasonable hypothesis, but the experimental evidences in support of these concepts operating in a cell is not very strong and hence it is some way to go for universal acceptance.

One important feature devised by nature in electron transfer reactions is a metal mediated reaction that has never been addressed in this book. These transfers are facile quantum chemical reactions where nature has used transition metals (with vacant 3d orbitals) to promote electron transfers between low molecular weight biomolecules that otherwise would be thermodynamically disallowed. Iron, copper and manganese perform key cellular reactions. Alkali metals such as sodium, potassium and calcium also participate in many ionic reactions that offer thermodynamic advantages to a living cell.

I found this author to be enigmatic since the book is heavily regionalized in its assertions. She refers to the scientific thought conveyed in this work as Western science throughout this book. Chapter 14 offers a very interesting discussion of entropy, and chapter 15 reminisces about the philosophy of life.