# The Demon in the Machine *By Paul Davies. Subtitle: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life (the 2019 Allen Lane hardcover reads "…Are Finally Solving…"). London: Allen Lane, 31 January 2019; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, October 2019; Penguin paperback 2020. UK hardcover ISBN 978-0-241-30959-9; US cloth ISBN 978-0-226-66970-0. A physicist's answer to Schrödinger's 1943 question "What is life?": life is matter plus information. Davies argues that the informational "software" of living things, from Maxwell's-demon-like molecular machines to gene networks, bioelectric patterns and brains, is what sets life apart. He thinks explaining it will need a new kind of physical law. Physics World Book of the Year 2019.* > **What I actually read.** The book is in copyright (© Paul Davies 2019). There is no legal free copy and no Internet Archive scan. I read the **publisher's own sample of the 2020 Penguin paperback** (27 pages, which Penguin supplies to retailers and the Portuguese bookseller Fnac hosts). It has the review quotes, the copyright page, the Delbrück epigraph, the **full contents list with chapter start pages**, the **whole Preface** (pp. 1–4) and **chapter 1 to p. 18** (mid-Box 2). For the rest of the book I did **not** read the text. Those chapter descriptions are built from: > - **Reviews** that describe or quote particular chapters: *The Guardian* (Steven Poole), *Times Higher Education* (Richard Joyner), *Physics World* (Tushna Commissariat), the *Sydney Morning Herald* (Bianca Nogrady), Brian Clegg's Popular Science and Ben Congdon's blog, which quotes long passages from ch. 2 with figure numbers. > - **A reader's chapter-by-chapter notes** on Cedric Joyce's site. They closely paraphrase the book but are not verbatim, so I treat them as secondary. > - **Davies's own talks about the book**: the Talks at Google lecture and the FQxI talk (I read both YouTube transcripts), plus interviews with *Physics World*, ABC Radio National's *Science Show*, Planetary Radio and *The Guardian*. > > A full-text PDF of the book is circulating on a third-party server. It is unauthorized; I neither used nor link it, and search-engine summaries that draw on it are treated as unverified. Quotations come from the sample, or as the named source quotes them. Page numbers are chapter start pages from the Penguin paperback contents page, plus pages within the sample I read; I give no others. Related in this vault: the source video note [[Video Summaries/Big Think/The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries Paul Davies Full Interview]]. Davies's [[Book Summaries/Davies, Paul/What's Eating the Universe - Paul Davies|What's Eating the Universe?]] came from the same interview. So did Schrödinger's [[Book Summaries/Schrödinger, Erwin/What Is Life - Erwin Schrödinger|What Is Life?]], which is this book's starting point. *Climbing Mount Improbable* (Dawkins), *Rare Earth* (Ward and Brownlee) and *The Goldilocks Enigma* (Davies) are queued next from the same interview. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life*. The Allen Lane 2019 hardcover subtitle reads "How Hidden Webs of Information Are **Finally** Solving the Mystery of Life" (Open Library; *Nature*'s review heading; Amazon UK Kindle). The 2020 Penguin paperback title page and the Chicago edition drop "Finally" | | Author | Paul Davies (P. C. W. Davies), Regents' Professor of Physics and director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Arizona State University | | First edition (UK) | London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2019. Published 31 January 2019, £20 hardcover, 272 pp. ([*THE*](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/demon-machine-how-hidden-webs-information-are-solving-mystery-life-paul-davies-allen-lane)); *Physics World* gives 252 pp. Preface signed "Sydney and Phoenix, December 2017" ([publisher's sample](https://static.fnac-static.com/multimedia/PT/pdf/9780141986401.pdf)) | | Paperback (UK) | Penguin Books 2020, ISBN 978-0-141-98640-1. Typeset by Jouve (UK); cover design by Richard Green (sample). Other Penguin ISBNs on Open Library: 978-0-241-36093-4 (2019) and 978-0-241-30960-5 (2019); I did not confirm their formats ([Open Library work](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20743618W)) | | US edition | Chicago: University of Chicago Press, October 2019 (Open Library: 16 October 2019), "Copublished with Penguin Books, UK". Cloth ISBN 978-0-226-66970-0, $27.50; ebook 978-0-226-66984-7; 272 pp., 16 halftones, 6 × 9 in. ([UChicago Press](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo45084244.html); [Fall 2019 catalog](https://press.uchicago.edu/dam/ucp/books/pdf/seasonal-catalogs/fall2019_UChicagoPress-opt.pdf)). LCCN 2019008166; OCLC 1089276323; LCC QH501 .D38 2019 ([Open Library edition](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL32285504M)). *The Quarterly Review of Biology* gives "vii + 251 p.; ill.; index" ([QRB, doi 10.1086/711813](https://doi.org/10.1086/711813)) | | Structure | Preface (p. 1); seven chapters; Epilogue (p. 209); Further Reading (p. 219); Notes (p. 225); Illustration Credits (p. 236); Index (p. 237) (Penguin paperback pages, from the sample contents page). Chapters contain numbered boxes (Box 1 "The magic puzzle box", Box 2 "Life's basic machinery", Box 12 in ch. 6) and numbered figures (Congdon cites Figs. 4 and 6 in ch. 2) | | Epigraph | Max Delbrück, *Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences* 38 (1949), 173–90: "The meanest living cell becomes a magic puzzle box full of elaborate and changing molecules…" (sample) | | Audiobook | Unabridged, read by Nigel Patterson, 9 h 13 min, Tantor Media, 16 May 2023 ([Audible](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Demon-in-the-Machine-Audiobook/B0C3WNFVBY)) | | Awards | *Physics World* Book of the Year 2019 ([Physics World](https://physicsworld.com/a/the-demon-in-the-machine-by-paul-davies-wins-physics-world-book-of-the-year-2019/)). The Chicago Press also lists it as a *Financial Times*, *Sunday Times* and *Telegraph* best science book of the year | | Cover | [Open Library cover (Chicago edition)](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/10912243-L.jpg) | **Where it came up.** - Video: [The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries | Paul Davies: Full Interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I), Big Think, published 2026-11-06, at [0:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I&t=15s). In his introduction Davies names it as the book before *What's Eating the Universe?*, about the nature of life. The interview's first two chapters (life as hardware plus software, Maxwell's demon, Landauer, Schrödinger's "new kind of physical law", Levin's two-headed planaria) restate the book's argument closely. - Requested by Video Summaries on 2026-11-06. - Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Big Think/The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries Paul Davies Full Interview]]. ## 2. Book resources **Reference and catalog pages.** - Publishers: [University of Chicago Press](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo45084244.html) (blurb, contents, review quotes); [Penguin UK paperback](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305448/the-demon-in-the-machine-by-paul-davies/9780141986401); [BiblioVault](https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9780226669700); [ASU Beyond Center book page](https://cosmos.asu.edu/publication/demon-machine). - Open Library: [OL20743618W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20743618W) (Allen Lane/Penguin editions) and [OL24379903W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24379903W) (Chicago cloth). - Google Books: [search by ISBN](https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780226669700). I did not check whether a preview exists. - WorldCat: [OCLC 1089276323](https://search.worldcat.org/title/1089276323). **Free (legal).** - **No legal free full text.** The book is in copyright (2019). Project Gutenberg: not applicable. - **Free sample:** the publisher's 27-page paperback sample PDF (contents, Preface, ch. 1 to p. 18), [hosted by Fnac](https://static.fnac-static.com/multimedia/PT/pdf/9780141986401.pdf). - **Internet Archive lending / Open Library borrow: no.** An Internet Archive search (title "demon machine", creator "davies") returns nothing, and every Open Library record shows "no_ebook". - **Libby/OverDrive: yes, ebook and audiobook.** OverDrive carries the Penguin ebook ([4484616](https://www.overdrive.com/media/4484616/the-demon-in-the-machine)) and the Tantor audiobook read by Nigel Patterson ([9631520](https://www.overdrive.com/media/9631520/the-demon-in-the-machine)). Whether your library has them varies; check in Libby. - **Hoopla: not found.** A web search turned up no Hoopla listing. Tantor titles are often on Hoopla, so it is worth checking in the app. - **Unauthorized copies:** a full-text PDF on a third-party server and "free audiobook" uploads on YouTube are pirated. I neither used nor link them. **Paid.** - **Amazon print.** Chicago cloth [022666970X](https://www.amazon.com/dp/022666970X); Allen Lane hardcover [024130959X](https://www.amazon.com/dp/024130959X); Penguin paperback [0141986409](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141986409). - **Kindle.** Yes. Chicago ebook [B07YRL1GK6](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YRL1GK6); Penguin ebook ("…Finally Solving…") [B07D1G7LJX](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D1G7LJX). - **Audible.** Yes: [B0C3WNFVBY](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Demon-in-the-Machine-Audiobook/B0C3WNFVBY), read by Nigel Patterson, 9 h 13 min (Tantor, 2023). Audible Canada uses a different ASIN ([B0C3WL1R34](https://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Demon-in-the-Machine-Audiobook/B0C3WL1R34)). - **Other:** [Apple Books audiobook](https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-demon-in-the-machine-how-hidden-webs-of/id1686222855); [Penguin UK](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305448/the-demon-in-the-machine-by-paul-davies/9780141986401). ## 3. Author biography **Paul Charles William Davies** was born in London on 22 April 1946. He took a BSc in physics at University College London in 1967 and a PhD there in 1970, then did postdoctoral work under Fred Hoyle at Cambridge ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies)). Davies says Hoyle taught him "not to be afraid of wild thinking" ([*The Guardian*, 26 Jan 2019](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/26/i-predict-great-revolution-physicists-define-life-paul-davies)). He held posts at Cambridge, King's College London and Newcastle, then at Adelaide and Macquarie universities in Australia, where he helped found the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. Since 2006 he has been at Arizona State University, where he directs the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science and is Regents' Professor ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies)). His research is mainly in quantum field theory in curved spacetime: the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect and the Bunch–Davies vacuum carry his name. He also works on the arrow of time and astrobiology, including the "shadow biosphere" hypothesis. Two other projects feed directly into this book: - **Cancer research.** He led an NCI-funded physics-of-cancer program at ASU, which the Preface credits for "much of the cancer research reported here". With Charles Lineweaver he proposed the atavistic theory of cancer. - **Origin-of-life work with Sara Walker.** The Preface says "a lot of the ideas I present here originate with my colleague Sara Walker", and at Google he said "almost everything that I write in my book originates with my young collaborator, Sarah Walker" ([Talks at Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favrMbfi1Pw)). He co-authored the 2011 *Science* "arsenic life" paper (Wolfe-Simon et al.), which was refuted in 2012 and retracted in 2025 ([Retraction Watch](https://retractionwatch.com/2025/07/24/science-retraction-arsenic-life-nasa-astrobiology/)). He has written about 30 popular books. His honours include the Templeton Prize (1995), the Royal Society's Faraday Prize (2002), membership of the Order of Australia and the asteroid 6870 Pauldavies (sample, "About the author"; [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies)). Reviewers of this book link its "bio-friendly" leanings to that Templeton background: Joyner does so explicitly, and Poole notes the teleological undertone. Davies himself calls intelligent design "anathema" and says a life principle built into the laws is "wishful thinking because at this stage I can't demonstrate it" ([*Guardian* interview](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/26/i-predict-great-revolution-physicists-define-life-paul-davies)). ## 4. Author interviews and talks - **Talks at Google, "The Demon in the Machine" (London, 2019)**: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favrMbfi1Pw). A 40-minute précis of the book followed by Q&A: Schrödinger, the life meter and Enceladus, Nurse's "Life, logic and information", von Neumann's universal constructor, Maxwell's demon, Landauer and Bennett, information engines, ion channels, Levin's planaria, quantum biology. The Q&A covers Chess Plus, integrated information, Jeremy England, Szilard's engine and free will as tied to the felt flow of time. I read the transcript. - **FQxI, "The Demon in the Machine by Paul Davies" (FQxI conference on agency, 2019)**: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SnJdp-hzrY). A shorter version: the "demonic cut" between Shannon bits and contextual information, state-dependent laws (Chess Plus), then the limits of agency in de Sitter space. I read the transcript. - ***Physics World* interview with Tushna Commissariat (March 2019 issue)**: [Physics World](https://physicsworld.com/a/life-the-universe-and-everything-an-interview-with-paul-davies/). "Life = matter + information", Wheeler's "mutability", Chess Plus, Lee Cronin's life meter, and how he flags speculation ("copious footnotes"). Read. The related podcast is [here](https://physicsworld.com/a/discussing-the-mystery-of-life-with-paul-davies-plus-new-catalogues-of-topological-materials/) (not listened to). - ***The Guardian*, Ian Sample, "'I predict a great revolution': inside the struggle to define life" (26 January 2019)**: [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/26/i-predict-great-revolution-physicists-define-life-paul-davies). The life meter, "digital doctors", and bio-friendly laws versus intelligent design. Read. - ***Guardian* Science Weekly, "Cross Section: Paul Davies" (15 February 2019)**: [Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2019/feb/15/cross-section-paul-davies-science-weekly-podcast). Not listened to. - **ABC Radio National, *The Science Show* with Robyn Williams, "The secret of life – explanation through new physics" (2019)**: [ABC listen](https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/the-secret-of-life---explanation-through-new-physics/10838274). Schrödinger in Dublin, the demon, viruses as alive only within a system, and the biosphere as "the original World Wide Web". Transcript read. - **Planetary Radio with Mat Kaplan, "Life=Matter+Information" (19 February 2020)**: [Planetary Society](https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/0219-2020-paul-davies-demon-in-machine). Nearly an hour on the book, opening with the Epilogue's Einstein epigraph; covers the cell–organism "contract", the atavistic view of cancer, and quantum mind. Transcript skimmed. - **The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, with Brent Ghelfi**: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvVv6EK9-eA). Not watched. - **Premier *Unbelievable?*, "Paul Davies – the extraordinary machinery in our cells"**: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FBUI1CytsQ). Not watched. - **Big Think, "The laws of the universe are unable to explain these origin mysteries" (6 November 2026)** and the clip "Meaning is the missing ingredient in the physics of life": [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I); [clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1-nis97HUk). The source of this queue entry; the full interview was summarized in the vault, the clip not watched. ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** "There are many books about what life does. This is a book about what life is" (Preface, p. 1). Davies takes as his starting point Schrödinger's 1943 Dublin lectures. Like Schrödinger, who wrote that living matter "is likely to involve 'other laws of physics' hitherto unknown", Davies rejects the reductionist orthodoxy that "known physics alone is all that is needed to explain life": "I disagree. Like Schrödinger, I think living organisms manifest deep new physical principles, and that we are on the threshold of uncovering and harnessing those principles" (ch. 1, p. 6). The new ingredient is "not simply a matter of an additional type of force – a 'life force' – but something altogether more subtle, something that interweaves matter and information, wholes and parts, simplicity and complexity" (pp. 6–7). The unifying concept is information, "not in its prosaic everyday sense but as an abstract quantity which, like energy, has the ability to animate matter" (Preface, p. 2). He thinks we are "on the threshold of answering Schrödinger's question, and the answer will usher in a whole new era of science" (p. 1). Reviewers sum up the slogan as "life = matter + information" ([*SMH*](https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-demon-in-the-machine-review-paul-davies-on-how-information-is-key-to-life-20190214-h1ba3v.html); [*Physics World*](https://physicsworld.com/a/life-the-universe-and-everything-an-interview-with-paul-davies/)). In the *Physics World* interview Davies calls the book "a self-confessed manifesto of sorts" (Commissariat's words). **Outline (Penguin paperback 2020; chapter titles and start pages from the contents page).** The source of each chapter description is noted. *Preface* (p. 1; **read**). The book is about what life is, written by "a physicist and cosmologist" who will "dodge most of the technicalities and home in on the basic principles". The gulf between physics and biology "is unbridgeable without fundamentally new concepts". The missing link is a new field "at the interface of biology, physics, computing and mathematics". From the "ferment of information" comes "the concept of agency… with its links to consciousness, free will and other vexing puzzles". Very recently, "laws that interweave information, energy, heat and work have been applied to living organisms". The acknowledgements are a map of the book's sources: - Sara Walker ("'Life is the next great frontier of physics!' she declares") and ASU students Alyssa Adams, Hyunju Kim and Cole Mathis. - Michael Levin; Giulio Tononi, Larissa Albantakis and Erik Hoel on integrated information. - Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili, Birgitta Whaley and Philip Ball, who gave feedback on ch. 5. - Charles Lineweaver, "who playfully disagrees with almost everything I say and write". - His cancer collaborators, the NCI grant, the Templeton World Charity Foundation's "Power of Information" programme, and Pauline Davies, who "carefully read three entire drafts". 1. **What is Life?** (p. 5; **read to p. 18**). - *Schrödinger.* The chapter opens with Schrödinger's February 1943 Trinity College lectures, delivered from neutral Ireland, where de Valera had founded the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1940. Schrödinger saw that defying the second law needed a molecule "at once complex enough to embed a vast quantity of information and stable enough to withstand the degrading effects of thermodynamics. We now know that this entity is DNA." - *Box 1, "The magic puzzle box".* It lists life's puzzling properties. What Darwin did not envisage is that, threading through life's material complexity ("the hardware of life"), "was an even more breathtaking informational complexity (the software of life)". - *"Goodbye life force".* Aristotle's teleology, then vitalism. Driesch (spelled "Dreisch" in the text) found that separated sea-urchin cells each grew into a whole larva, and inferred an "entelechy". Helmholtz's frog-muscle calorimetry of the 1840s balanced "the energy books" without a vital force. - *"Life springs surprises".* Life makes the impossible happen. Since 1958 rockets have produced "anti-accretion", and since 1940 humans have made about "a thousand tonnes" of plutonium, which "without life" would be "utterly inexplicable". Extremophiles show the same inventiveness: *Desulforudis audaxviator*, living on radiolysis 3 km down in the Mponeng gold mine, and *Chroococcidiopsis*, living by deliquescence inside Atacama salt pillars. - *"The vexing problem of the life meter".* Titan is "a kind of gigantic failed biology experiment". Could an instrument say it got "87.3 per cent of the way to life"? He uses Dawkins's Mount Improbable for the prebiotic climb, and notes that a dead mouse is as chemically complex as a living one. Tardigrades, bacterial spores, the planned Enceladus plume probe and disputed biosignature gases all show the problem. So does Viking's 1976 Labelled Release experiment: designer Gil Levin "claims he detected life on Mars", while NASA attributes the result to soil chemistry. A footnote mentions Lee Cronin's proposed molecular complexity measure. - *"The tale of the ancient molecule".* DNA was discovered by Miescher in 1869, and "every cell in your body contains about two metres of it". We share "98 per cent of our genes with chimpanzees, 85 per cent with mice, 60 per cent with chickens and more than half with many bacteria". Box 2 explains the genetic code. The sample ends there. - *Rest of the chapter (not read).* Per Cedric Joyce's notes, it argues that organisms are far from equilibrium, that proteins do "the grunt work" while nucleic acids hold "the life plan", and that "the thing that separates life from non-life is information" (also quoted by Congdon). 2. **Enter the Demon** (p. 27; not read; at 40 pages, the longest chapter). - *Heat and entropy.* The chapter explains heat engines and entropy, and Shannon's realization that his information formula matches the physicist's entropy, so that "information is about what you know, and entropy is about what you don't know" (Joyce notes). - *The demon.* Maxwell's 1867 demon sorts fast from slow molecules ([Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/18/demon-in-machine-paul-davies-review); [THE](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/demon-machine-how-hidden-webs-information-are-solving-mystery-life-paul-davies-allen-lane)). Szilárd's one-molecule engine follows (Fig. 4). Szilárd "concluded, reasonably enough, that the price [of the engine's work] was the cost of measurement" (Congdon's bracket). Landauer (1961) showed instead that erasure costs heat ("Information is physical!"), and Bennett resolved the paradox ([Congdon](https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2025/12/14/Book-Review-The-Demon-in-the-Machine/), quoting the book). - *Information engines.* Jarzynski's thought-experiment "information engine" is a ring and swivelling paddles like a child's mobile (Fig. 6). It turns heat into work by writing randomness into a blank memory, so a blank register is "an injection of fuel" (Congdon quotes the passage at length; Joyce). Real information engines followed: the talk version cites an "information-powered refrigerator" in Finland (75% efficient) and a Korean device with over 98% conversion. - *Demons in biology.* Biological demons include kinesin "molecular ratchets" and olfactory receptors ([THE](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/demon-machine-how-hidden-webs-information-are-solving-mystery-life-paul-davies-allen-lane)). Life must be super-efficient, or organisms "would quite simply cook themselves to death with waste heat" (quoted by [SMH](https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-demon-in-the-machine-review-paul-davies-on-how-information-is-key-to-life-20190214-h1ba3v.html)). Organisms are prediction machines; "Living organisms are not just bags of information: they are computers" (Joyce notes). - *Reception.* Clegg found the information-engine section unclear. 3. **The Logic of Life** (p. 67; not read). The chapter covers: - *Logic and computation.* Gödel, Turing's universal machine and the halting problem: undecidability makes possibility "unbounded", which is "surely key" if life is fundamental (Joyce notes). - *Self-replication.* Von Neumann's universal constructor and the dual role of DNA, as active instructions and as passive data to be copied, which "preceded the logical architecture that we now know life on Earth uses" (Google talk). - *Networks.* Paul Nurse's call to translate biochemistry "into the logic circuits that reveal how information is managed". Gene regulatory networks follow, illustrated with a worked network (Fig. 11 and Table 2, around pp. 95–96, per a reader comment on Clegg's review). The yeast cell-cycle network has a four-gene "control kernel", and "40 per cent of node pairs that are correlated via information transfer are not in fact physically connected" (Joyce notes). - *Morphogenesis.* Turing's morphogens, and the coupling of chemical and informational networks. - *Can a biologist fix a radio?* Joyner reports the question's answer: "No, but this tells you something important about biology." - *Reception.* Clegg says most of this chapter fails "to put across clearly just what is going on". 4. **Darwinism 2.0** (p. 109; not read). The chapter covers: - *Software evolves too.* "Evolution operates on biological software just as it does on hardware" (Joyce notes). - *Epigenetics and bioelectric "pre-patterns".* Levin's planaria give two-headed worms whose fragments regenerate two heads "even though they have exactly the same DNA" ([Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/18/demon-in-machine-paul-davies-review)), as do space-flown fragments (Google talk). - *Non-random variation.* Stressed bacteria "engineer their own high-speed evolution" (evolvability), and "jumping genes" and genome editing by cells follow (Joyce notes). Joyner says Davies "courts serious controversy" here: he suggests demons in the genome might allow inheritance of acquired characteristics and is "sympathetic to the idea that genetic mutation may not be entirely random". - *Multicellularity and cancer.* Multicellularity is a "contract" between cells and organism. Cancer is its breakdown: on the atavistic theory (Davies and Lineweaver) it is "a reversion to a more primitive, selfish agenda" that reawakens ancient gene networks, with mutational "hotspots and cold-spots" (Joyce notes; Planetary Radio). The talk version adds that treatment should "tackle its weaknesses, not its strength". - *Reception.* Clegg praises its coverage of "how far we've gone beyond the selfish gene". 5. **Spooky Life and Quantum Demons** (p. 144; not read). Quantum biology: - *Electron tunnelling.* Tunnelling through organic molecules, with biomolecules "tuned exactly to the transition point" as critical conductors (Joyce notes; the Google Q&A cites ASU work on sequence-dependent tunnelling). - *Photosynthesis.* Quantum-coherent exciton transport, including in green sulphur bacteria ([SMH](https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-demon-in-the-machine-review-paul-davies-on-how-information-is-key-to-life-20190214-h1ba3v.html)). - *Bird navigation.* The radical-pair cryptochrome compass: "The era of quantum ornithology has arrived!" (quoted by Congdon). - *Smell.* Turin's vibrational theory of olfaction. - *Quantum computing in life?* Speculation that life might manipulate qubits: "Quantum mechanics has a place for exponential godlike information management: has nature overlooked to fill it? I don't think so" (quoted by SMH). - *Hedges.* Davies concedes that early claims "have been hotly debated" and some "were overblown" (Congdon). 6. **Almost a Miracle** (p. 166; not read). The origin of life: - *Framing.* Crick's "almost a miracle" and Darwin's "mere rubbish" (Google talk). Life was established "by 3.5 billion years ago", with "no compelling evidence that terrestrial life started on Earth" (panspermia), and hydrothermal vents are a popular candidate site (Joyce notes). - *Unknowns.* "Nobody knows how life began!" There is the "backsliding problem" of prebiotic chemistry, and it may have been "an immense fluke". - *Physics is "life-blind".* "There is nothing in the law of physics that singles out 'life' as a favoured state or destination" (quoted by SMH). An explanation "has to include an explanation for the origin of such digital information management and – especially – the origin of the code" (quoted by SMH). In the talk version: "How can molecules write code?" - *Second genesis.* If life starts easily, Earth may host a "shadow biosphere". The major transitions (eukaryogenesis, sex, multicellularity) are "reorganization of informational architecture" (Joyce notes). - *New laws.* This is presumably where state-dependent laws come in. In the *Physics World* interview Davies describes "the book I call 'Chess Plus'", a game whose rules change with the state of play and so reaches configurations "impossible" under fixed rules. Its placement in ch. 6 rather than the Epilogue is unverified. Box 12 discusses life as a planetary-scale process (cross-reference in ch. 1, p. 17). 7. **The Ghost in the Machine** (p. 184; not read). Consciousness, "arguably the hardest problem facing science today" (Joyce notes). - *Questions.* "What are the physical processes that generate consciousness, and how are minds able to make a difference in the physical world?" (SMH's paraphrase). - *Brains.* Neurons signal by waves of polarization through voltage-gated ion channels (Maxwell-demon-like), and the brain runs on a light bulb's power. - *Integrated information.* Tononi's integrated information (phi). The causal-emergence result "macro can beat micro" (quoted by Congdon) lets agent-level causes coexist with atomic ones in open systems. - *Free will.* Over-determinism, and free will linked to the felt flow of time (Google Q&A). - *Quantum mind.* The measurement problem and the idea that a system's phi might trigger wave-function collapse: "And if mind can do that, surely it does have a kind of leverage over matter, albeit in a subtle manner?" (quoted by SMH). - *Tone.* Davies says he wrote this chapter "in a slightly light-hearted manner" with "copious footnotes" as caveats ([Physics World](https://physicsworld.com/a/life-the-universe-and-everything-an-interview-with-paul-davies/)). *Epilogue* (p. 209; not read). Headed, per Planetary Radio's host, by Einstein's "One can best feel in dealing with living things how primitive physics still is". It argues that "it is impossible to derive the laws of information from the known laws of physics" (Joyce notes). Laws that are "a function of the state of the system", in the spirit of Wheeler's "mutability", may give "pathways to new patterns of complexity". The Guardian review reports that it ends with the hope that laws of nature may evolve and be "bio-friendly": "the emergence of life, and perhaps mind, are etched into the underlying lawfulness of nature". SMH quotes: "It's an uplifting thought that the laws of the universe might be intrinsically bio-friendly." *Further Reading* (p. 219), *Notes* (p. 225), *Illustration Credits* (p. 236), *Index* (p. 237). **Key ideas.** - **Life = matter + information.** Chemistry is life's hardware and information its software. What distinguishes life is how it stores, processes and manages information, not any special stuff. - **Information is physical.** From Maxwell's demon through Szilárd, Landauer and Bennett, information can act as a thermodynamic fuel, and erasing it costs entropy. Cells are full of near-optimal demons: motor proteins, ion channels, receptors. - **Information has causal power above the gene.** Network-level patterns, bioelectric pre-patterns and epigenetics carry heritable information that DNA sequence alone does not, and "macro can beat micro". - **Origins are the crux.** Chemistry alone cannot explain how molecules came to write and read a code, and physics as currently formulated is "life-blind". - **A new kind of law.** Following Schrödinger and Wheeler, Davies (with Sara Walker) proposes state-dependent laws of information that might fast-track matter to life. He labels this conjecture, as he does the "bio-friendly" universe. - **Payoffs.** A life meter for astrobiology (Enceladus, Titan, Mars), and an informational approach to cancer and regenerative medicine ("digital doctors"). **Reception.** Reviewers were warm about the writing and reserved about the subtitle: - **Praise.** "Brilliantly vivid… elegant and lucid… extremely promising, but it remains highly speculative, as he himself laudably emphasises" (Poole, *Guardian*). "A dizzying tour de force, which mostly reports fairly on the many highly contentious matters discussed" (Joyner, *THE*). Five stars from Clegg, who called it "the best explanation I've seen of the relationship of information and entropy". "Just what the pop-sci reader ordered" (*Physics World*). *Nature*'s Timo Hannay called it "boundary-transcending" (press quote). - **Reservations.** - Clegg says the subtitle "probably over-promises", the information-engine and logic chapters are unclear, and readers may "need to read it again". - Joyner says the book "presents little evidence that we are nearing an answer". He also finds Davies sympathetic to a life-friendly universe and dismissive of "the mundane, known rules of physics and chemistry". - Poole notes that ending on laws that make life "etched into the underlying lawfulness of nature" is teleological, like Nagel's *Mind and Cosmos*. ## 6. Fact-check Claims are from the sample I read (Preface and ch. 1), unless marked as reported by a reviewer, a reader's notes or a talk. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | Schrödinger lectured on "What is Life?" at Trinity College Dublin in February 1943, and the book appeared the next year (ch. 1) | **Supported.** Lectures February 1943, book Cambridge University Press 1944 | [Wikipedia: What Is Life?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F); vault dossier [[Book Summaries/Schrödinger, Erwin/What Is Life - Erwin Schrödinger\|What Is Life?]] | | Schrödinger wrote that living matter "is likely to involve 'other laws of physics' hitherto unknown" (ch. 1) | **Supported.** *What Is Life?* ch. 7 ("Is life based on the laws of physics?") | [Wikiquote: Erwin Schrödinger](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger) | | Delbrück epigraph from *Trans. Connecticut Acad.* 38 (1949), 173–90 | **Supported.** Delbrück, "A physicist looks at biology" | [Delbrück 1949 (via Google Scholar)](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Delbr%C3%BCck+%22A+physicist+looks+at+biology%22+1949) | | De Valera, "himself a physicist", founded the Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin in 1940 and invited Schrödinger (ch. 1) | **Partly disputed.** DIAS was established by the Institute for Advanced Studies Act 1940 at de Valera's initiative: supported. But de Valera was a **mathematics** graduate and teacher, not a physicist | [Wikipedia: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Institute_for_Advanced_Studies); [Wikipedia: Éamon de Valera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89amon_de_Valera) | | Driesch's sea-urchin experiments, in which separated early cells each grew into a complete larva, were performed "in 1885" (ch. 1) | **Disputed (date and spelling).** Driesch (b. 1867) did the blastomere-separation experiments in **1891** and published them in 1891–92. The text spells him "Dreisch" | [Embryo Project Encyclopedia](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/potency-first-two-cleavage-cells-echinoderm-development-experimental-production-partial-and) | | Helmholtz showed in the 1840s that muscle work and heat balance chemical energy, with no vital force (ch. 1) | **Supported.** Helmholtz's muscle-heat studies (1845–48) fed his 1847 essay on the conservation of force | [Wikipedia: Hermann von Helmholtz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_von_Helmholtz) | | Plutonium's longest-lived isotope has a half-life of about 81 million years; plutonium reappeared on Earth in 1940 (ch. 1) | **Supported.** Pu-244 half-life ≈ 80–81 million years; first synthesized by Seaborg's group, December 1940 | [Wikipedia: Plutonium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium); [Wikipedia: Plutonium-244](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-244) | | "There are now estimated to be a thousand tonnes" of plutonium (ch. 1) | **Unverified (probably low).** IPFM's estimates of *separated* plutonium alone run to several hundred tonnes, and far more sits in spent reactor fuel; I did not pin down a total | [IPFM: Fissile material stocks](https://fissilematerials.org/) | | Leaves "convert sunlight into electrical energy with 90 per cent efficiency" (ch. 1) | **Disputed (misleading).** The quantum efficiency of primary charge separation is near unity, but whole-plant conversion of sunlight into chemical energy is a few per cent | [Wikipedia: Photosynthetic efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency) | | *Desulforudis audaxviator* lives about 3 km down in the Mponeng gold mine on energy from radiolysis (ch. 1) | **Supported.** Chivian et al., *Science* 2008 (2.8 km) | [Chivian et al. 2008](https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155495) | | *Chroococcidiopsis* lives inside Atacama halite, watered by deliquescence (ch. 1) | **Supported.** Wierzchos, Ascaso & McKay 2006 | [Wierzchos et al. 2006, *Astrobiology*](https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2006.6.415) | | Titan is "the largest [moon] in the solar system" (ch. 1) | **Disputed.** Titan is the **second-largest** moon; Ganymede is larger. Titan's discovery by Huygens in 1655 and Cassini's 1997 launch are supported | [Wikipedia: Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)); [NASA: Ganymede](https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/ganymede/) | | Cassini found Enceladus spewing organic molecules from fissures above a subsurface ocean (ch. 1) | **Supported** | [Postberg et al. 2018, *Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0246-4) | | NASA "is planning a mission to fly through a plume of Enceladus in the 2020s" to look for life (ch. 1) | **Not borne out.** No Enceladus plume mission was selected for the 2020s. In the Google talk Davies refers to a proposal being prepared for NASA; the 2022 Decadal Survey recommended an Enceladus Orbilander for later decades | [NASA Decadal Survey 2023–2032](https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/documents/); [Wikipedia: Enceladus Orbilander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_Orbilander) | | Viking's 1976 Labelled Release experiment gave positive results; Gil Levin claims it found life, while NASA says it did not (ch. 1) | **Supported** as a description of the dispute | [Wikipedia: Viking lander biological experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experiments) | | Glycolaldehyde was found in gas near a star 400 light years away (ch. 1) | **Supported.** IRAS 16293-2422 (ALMA, Jørgensen et al. 2012) | [ESO press release, 2012](https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1234/) | | DNA was discovered in 1869 by Friedrich Miescher; each human cell has about 2 m of it (ch. 1) | **Supported** | [Wikipedia: Friedrich Miescher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Miescher) | | We share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees, 85% with mice, 60% with chickens "and more than half with many bacteria" (ch. 1) | **Partly supported.** Chimp (~98–99% DNA identity), mouse (~85% of protein-coding sequence) and chicken (~60% of genes with a counterpart) are standard popular figures. "More than half with many bacteria" is **unverified** and likely overstated: only a minority of human genes have bacterial homologues | [NHGRI: Comparative genomics](https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Comparative-Genomics-Fact-Sheet) | | Box 2: the DNA letters stand for "adenosine, cytosine, guanine and thymine" (ch. 1) | **Disputed (terminology).** A is **adenine**; adenosine is the nucleoside (base plus sugar). The other three names are the bases | [Wikipedia: Nucleobase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleobase) | | Maxwell's demon (1867); Szilárd's engine (1929); Landauer: erasure, not measurement, carries the thermodynamic cost; Bennett's resolution (ch. 2 per Congdon and Joyce) | **Supported**, with the caveat Davies himself gives in Q&A: the resolution "has its detractors" | [Wikipedia: Maxwell's demon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon); [Wikipedia: Landauer's principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle); [Bérut et al. 2012, *Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10872) | | An "information-powered refrigerator" has been built in Finland (Google talk; reviewers say ch. 2 covers information engines) | **Supported.** Koski et al., "On-chip Maxwell's demon as an information-powered refrigerator", *PRL* 115, 260602 (2015), Aalto University | [Koski et al. 2015](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.260602) | | Information in a DNA strand is "about 2 billion bits – more than the information contained in all the books in the Library of Congress" (as quoted by Clegg; chapter unknown) | **Disputed.** The human haploid genome (~3.1 billion base pairs at 2 bits each) is ~6 billion bits ≈ 0.8 GB. The Library of Congress's ~25–40 million books hold vastly more text. Clegg makes the same objection | [Clegg review](https://popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-demon-in-machine-paul-davies.html); [NHGRI: human genome](https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Sequencing-Human-Genome-cost) | | Levin's lab makes two-headed planaria whose fragments regenerate as two-headed although the DNA is unchanged (ch. 4 per Guardian; Google talk) | **Supported.** Bioelectric reprogramming persists across rounds of amputation without genomic change | [Durant et al. 2017, *Biophys. J.*](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2017.04.011); [Oviedo et al. 2010](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2009.12.012) | | Of planarian middles sent to the ISS, "about 15%" came back two-headed (Google talk; possibly in ch. 4) | **Disputed (number).** Morokuma et al. 2017 report **1 of 15** fragments (≈7%) regenerating double-headed | [Morokuma et al. 2017, *Regeneration*](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/reg2.79); [Tufts Now, 2017](https://now.tufts.edu/2017/06/09/space-traveling-flatworms-help-scientists-enhance-understanding-regenerative-health) | | Cancer is an atavism: a reversion to an ancient unicellular "toolkit" (ch. 4 per Joyce notes; Planetary Radio) | **Disputed (minority hypothesis).** The theory is Davies and Lineweaver's (2011), with phylostratigraphy support (Trigos et al. 2017). Mainstream oncology treats cancer as somatic evolution driven by mutation and selection | [Davies & Lineweaver 2011, *Phys. Biol.*](https://doi.org/10.1088/1478-3975/8/1/015001); [Trigos et al. 2017, *PNAS*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617743114) | | Mutation may not be entirely random; acquired characteristics might be inherited (ch. 4 per Joyner) | **Disputed.** Stress-induced mutagenesis and mutation-rate variation are real (and Monroe et al. 2022 found non-uniform mutation in *Arabidopsis*). But directed, adaptive mutation in the Lamarckian sense is not accepted | [Monroe et al. 2022, *Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04269-6); [Wikipedia: Adaptive mutation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_mutation) | | Long-lived quantum coherence boosts photosynthetic energy transfer (ch. 5 per SMH and Joyce notes) | **Disputed.** Engel et al. 2007 reported long-lived coherence in FMO, but later work (e.g. Duan et al. 2017) found electronic coherence too short-lived to matter; the observed beats are largely vibrational. Davies concedes that early claims were "overblown" | [Engel et al. 2007](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05678); [Duan et al. 2017, *PNAS*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702261114) | | Birds' magnetic compass relies on entangled radical pairs in cryptochrome (ch. 5 per Congdon) | **Supported (leading hypothesis), not settled.** Xu et al. 2021 showed magnetic sensitivity of robin cryptochrome 4 in vitro | [Xu et al. 2021, *Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03618-9) | | Smell may detect molecular vibrations via electron tunnelling (ch. 5 per Joyce notes) | **Disputed.** Turin's theory is contested: Keller & Vosshall 2004 found no human evidence, and Block et al. 2015 found none for the receptors tested | [Keller & Vosshall 2004](https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1215); [Block et al. 2015, *PNAS*](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503054112) | | Life was established on Earth by 3.5 billion years ago (ch. 6 per Joyce notes) | **Supported.** Stromatolites at 3.43–3.48 Ga (Strelley Pool, Dresser Formation); older claims are debated | [Allwood et al. 2006, *Nature*](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04764) | | In about 800 million years the Sun will boil the oceans (ch. 6 per Joyce notes) | **Disputed (timing).** Most models put ocean loss at ~1–1.5 billion years or later, though multicellular life may end within ~0.6–1 billion years. "800 million" sits at the early end | [Wikipedia: Future of Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth) | | In the yeast cell-cycle network, 40% of information-correlated node pairs have no direct physical link (ch. 3 per Joyce notes) | **Supported** as a report of the authors' own result | [Walker, Kim & Davies 2016, *Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A*](https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2015.0057) | | Einstein: "One can best feel in dealing with living things how primitive physics still is" (Epilogue epigraph per Planetary Radio) | **Unverified (secondary attribution).** It is usually cited to a letter to Leo Szilard as reported by Ronald Clark (1972); I did not find the original letter | [Rosen/Davies citation chain (Davies 2004, *BioSystems*)](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cdimarco/pdf/cogsci600/5_Davies.pdf) | | The human brain has up to 1,000 trillion connections and runs on about a light bulb's power (ch. 7 per Joyce notes) | **Supported** as an upper estimate. Synapses are usually estimated at 10¹⁴–10¹⁵; the brain uses ~20 W | [Wikipedia: Human brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain) | | Living matter requires new, state-dependent laws of physics; the laws may be "bio-friendly" (thesis; Epilogue) | **Unverified (conjecture).** Davies labels it "wishful thinking because at this stage I can't demonstrate it" ([Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/26/i-predict-great-revolution-physicists-define-life-paul-davies)); critics call it teleological (Poole) | [Poole review](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/18/demon-in-machine-paul-davies-review); [Joyner review](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/demon-machine-how-hidden-webs-information-are-solving-mystery-life-paul-davies-allen-lane) | **Overall.** The physics of information (Maxwell, Szilárd, Landauer, Bennett, information engines) and the case studies of extremophiles, Viking, Enceladus and Levin's planaria are accurately described. In the pages I could read I found several slips: - **Dates and terms:** Driesch's experiments are dated 1885 instead of 1891, and the A in DNA is given as "adenosine" instead of adenine. - **Wrong or loose facts:** Titan is called the largest moon (it is Ganymede), and the "90 per cent" efficiency for leaves is misleading. - **Overtaken by events:** the planned 2020s Enceladus plume mission never happened. Reviewers flag a further number: the DNA–Library of Congress comparison. The more speculative chapters lean on contested work: quantum coherence in photosynthesis, vibrational smell, the atavistic theory of cancer and non-random mutation. Davies signals that most of these are open, but the subtitle's "solving" overstates where the field stands. ## 7. Citations and references **The book's own apparatus.** Further Reading (p. 219), Notes (p. 225), Illustration Credits (p. 236) and Index (p. 237), plus numbered boxes and figures. Sources named in the pages I read: - Max Delbrück (1949 epigraph); Schrödinger, *What is Life?* (with note 1); Darwin's "tangled bank" (note 2); David Deutsch (note 3, epigraph to "Life springs surprises"). - Note 4 on anti-accretion; Richard Dawkins's Mount Improbable (note 5); note 6 on life as a planetary-scale process. - Aristotle; Hans Driesch; Hermann von Helmholtz; Lee Cronin (footnote); Gil Levin; Friedrich Miescher. - Acknowledged helpers and influences are listed in the Preface summary above. **Links used in this dossier.** - Publisher's sample (Penguin paperback), via Fnac: https://static.fnac-static.com/multimedia/PT/pdf/9780141986401.pdf - University of Chicago Press book page: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo45084244.html ; Fall 2019 catalog: https://press.uchicago.edu/dam/ucp/books/pdf/seasonal-catalogs/fall2019_UChicagoPress-opt.pdf - BiblioVault: https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9780226669700 - Penguin UK: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305448/the-demon-in-the-machine-by-paul-davies/9780141986401 - ASU Beyond Center: https://cosmos.asu.edu/publication/demon-machine - Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20743618W ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL24379903W ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL32285504M ; cover https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/10912243-L.jpg - Google Books (ISBN search): https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780226669700 - WorldCat: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1089276323 - *Quarterly Review of Biology* review: https://doi.org/10.1086/711813 - OverDrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/4484616/the-demon-in-the-machine ; https://www.overdrive.com/media/9631520/the-demon-in-the-machine - Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Demon-in-the-Machine-Audiobook/B0C3WNFVBY ; https://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Demon-in-the-Machine-Audiobook/B0C3WL1R34 ; Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-demon-in-the-machine-how-hidden-webs-of/id1686222855 - Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/022666970X ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/024130959X ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141986409 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YRL1GK6 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D1G7LJX - Reviews: - *The Guardian* (Steven Poole, 18 Jan 2019): https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/18/demon-in-machine-paul-davies-review - *Times Higher Education* (Richard Joyner): https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/demon-machine-how-hidden-webs-information-are-solving-mystery-life-paul-davies-allen-lane - *Physics World* (Tushna Commissariat, March 2019): https://physicsworld.com/a/life-the-universe-and-everything-an-interview-with-paul-davies/ ; Book of the Year: https://physicsworld.com/a/the-demon-in-the-machine-by-paul-davies-wins-physics-world-book-of-the-year-2019/ - *Sydney Morning Herald* (Bianca Nogrady, 15 Feb 2019): https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-demon-in-the-machine-review-paul-davies-on-how-information-is-key-to-life-20190214-h1ba3v.html - *Nature* (Timo Hannay, paywalled; quoted only via the press page): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00215-9 - *The Times* (Lewis Dartnell, paywalled, not read): https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/review-the-demon-in-the-machine-how-hidden-webs-of-information-are-solving-the-mystery-of-life-by-paul-davies-how-does-life-work-think-demonically-sp3hqqlql - Popular Science (Brian Clegg, 1 Feb 2019): https://popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-demon-in-machine-paul-davies.html - Ben Congdon (14 Dec 2025): https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2025/12/14/Book-Review-The-Demon-in-the-Machine/ - Reader's chapter notes (secondary): https://www.cedricjoyce.com/archive/pauldavies.html - Interviews and talks: - Talks at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=favrMbfi1Pw - FQxI talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SnJdp-hzrY - *Guardian* interview: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/26/i-predict-great-revolution-physicists-define-life-paul-davies - *Guardian* Science Weekly: https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2019/feb/15/cross-section-paul-davies-science-weekly-podcast - Physics World podcast: https://physicsworld.com/a/discussing-the-mystery-of-life-with-paul-davies-plus-new-catalogues-of-topological-materials/ - ABC *Science Show*: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/the-secret-of-life---explanation-through-new-physics/10838274 - Planetary Radio: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/0219-2020-paul-davies-demon-in-machine - Poisoned Pen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvVv6EK9-eA - Premier *Unbelievable?*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FBUI1CytsQ - Big Think clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1-nis97HUk - Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e41IyOlfj7I - Biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies ; https://retractionwatch.com/2025/07/24/science-retraction-arsenic-life-nasa-astrobiology/ - Fact-check evidence: - Schrödinger, Delbrück, DIAS, Driesch, Helmholtz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F ; https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger ; https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Delbr%C3%BCck+%22A+physicist+looks+at+biology%22+1949 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Institute_for_Advanced_Studies ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89amon_de_Valera ; https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/potency-first-two-cleavage-cells-echinoderm-development-experimental-production-partial-and ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_von_Helmholtz - Plutonium, photosynthesis, extremophiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-244 ; https://fissilematerials.org/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency ; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155495 ; https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2006.6.415 - Titan, Ganymede, Enceladus, Viking, glycolaldehyde: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon) ; https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/ganymede/ ; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0246-4 ; https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/documents/ ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_Orbilander ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_lander_biological_experiments ; https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1234/ - DNA and genomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Miescher ; https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Comparative-Genomics-Fact-Sheet ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleobase ; https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Sequencing-Human-Genome-cost - Thermodynamics of information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle ; https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10872 ; https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.260602 - Planaria, cancer, mutation: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpj.2017.04.011 ; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2009.12.012 ; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/reg2.79 ; https://now.tufts.edu/2017/06/09/space-traveling-flatworms-help-scientists-enhance-understanding-regenerative-health ; https://doi.org/10.1088/1478-3975/8/1/015001 ; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1617743114 ; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04269-6 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_mutation - Quantum biology: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05678 ; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702261114 ; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03618-9 ; https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1215 ; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503054112 - Early life, Earth's future, networks, Einstein, brain: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04764 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth ; https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2015.0057 ; https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cdimarco/pdf/cogsci600/5_Davies.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain