What Is the Problem With Combination?

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The book is a very compact, metaphorical discussion of what it is for a non equilibrium system to explore a space of possible combinations. Even dust mixed with water gives you different kinds of mud with different qualitative properties. And as a result, we even see in the world complex emergence of branch structures. If someone comes to it only being interested in learning about the physics, i actually hope that the use of the frame of biblical narrative,. that the chapters are sort of wrapped ind a, magnifies their understanding of the physics by giving them tangible equivalents from everyday life.

Erwin Schrödinger’s famous book What Is Life? highlighted the connections between physics, and thermodynamics in particular, and the nature of living beings. But the exact connections between living organisms and the flow of heat and entropy remains a topic of ongoing research. Jeremy England is a leader in this field, deriving connections between thermodynamic relations and the processes of life. He is also an ordained rabbi who finds resonances between modern science and passages in the Hebrew Bible. We talk about it all, from entropy fluctuation theorems to how scientists should approach religion.

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Jeremy England received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. He is currently Senior Director in the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning group at GlaxoSmithKline. He has been a Rhodes scholar, a Hertz fellow, and was named one of Forbes‘s “30 Under 30 Rising Stars of Science.” His new book is Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things.

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