The Living State

Book excerpt: The Living State: With Observations on Cancer explores some facets of life, including its pattern and structure, cellular mechanisms, and its connection with biochemistry and biophysics. It reflects the author's journey in his desire to understand life by looking at cells, animals, bacteria, molecules, and electrons, as well as his observations on cancer. Organized into eight chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the scientific community's longstanding pursuit to understand life and its origins. It then discusses water as an essential medium of organic matter on which life's machinery is built, along with the motion of muscle; biological stability and the paradox of evolution; the energetics of the biosphere based on the interaction of hydrogen and oxygen; the principles of defense against cellular damage; and how defense is linked to the regulation of growth in plants and animals. The reader is also introduced to growth regulation as a defense mechanism, which corrects mechanical injury in animals; the way that ketone aldehydes inhibit cell division; the theory of cancer; and cancer therapy. Biologists, chemists, and physicists will find this book an interesting read.