Public Excerpt from The Edge of Knowledge

The nature of life.

As subscribers to Critical Mass are well aware, I am releasing, every few weeks, short excerpts from The Edge of Knowledge for paid subscribers. I was very happy when Quillette Magazine, for which I am a contributing editor, agreed to publish a public excerpt, not behind a pay wall, as the publication date of my book became near.

For this excerpt, I chose the beginning of my chapter on the nature of life, addressing the open questions, What is life? How did life originate? Is DNA life unique? Are we alone?, and, What is the future of life? I open this chapter with a short discussion of the first question, which turns out to be a little more subtle than one might imagine, and it allowed me to talk a little about the role that physicists played in helping form the early questions that ultimately led to the discovery of DNA as the genetic code for life. In the process I also had a little fun with viruses, and even the Borg. I hope you enjoy it. The excerpt is entitled. “How do we Define Life?”