Astronomy/Space Exploration

On Wednesday evening, March 20, 2013,1 Paul Davies2 — theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author — spoke at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.3

Davies’ presentation on The Origin of Life moved beyond the traditional discussion and explored the deep conceptual mismatch between the realms of physics and chemistry (which are cast in the language of matter, energy and forces) and the realm of biology (which is described in the informational terms of genetic instructions, signals and codes). According to Davies, research to-date has focused on “the hardware” — the physical components and processes involved in the emergence of life. As an alternate approach, Davies outlined a “software” perspective grounded in the organization and management of information. …

Paul Davies on The Origin of LifeRead More »

1. Apologies for the delay posting this article! [↩]
2. Davies currently is Director of the “Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science” and co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, both at Arizona State University. Previously he held academic appointments at the Universities of Cambridge, London and Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK, before moving to Australia in 1990, initially as Professor of Mathematical Physics at The University of Adelaide. Later he helped found the Australian Centre for Astrobiology. [↩]
3. Paul Davies talk was part of The Center for Complexity and Collective Computation’s (C4) “John von Neumann Public Lecture Series in Complexity and Computation.” [↩]