Physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, author of The Demon in the Machine, argues that the deepest mystery of life’s origin is how chemistry came to write its own code.

Davies traces the question from Aristotle and Schrödinger’s “aperiodic crystal” to Maxwell’s demon, Michael Levin’s two-headed flatworms, and the possibility of a shadow biosphere hiding on Earth.

My name is Paul Davies. I'm a theoretical physicist and cosmologist by profession. I'm a Regents' Professor at Arizona State University where I'm also the director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. I've written over 30 books. The most recent is What's Eating the Universe? And Other Cosmic Questions and before that The Demon in the Machine which is all about the nature of life.

Chapter 1: What is life? Definition and information

Three origin mysteries

There are really three origin mysteries. I like to say there's the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin of consciousness.…