What is Life?

About this book

What does it mean to be alive, to be part of the world but separated from it by our skin? Exploring the meaning of death, the origins of life, the biological connection between death and sex, and the symbiotic evolution of the five organic kingdoms, the authors assert that to answer the question `What is life?' is a linguistic trap: the answer is not a noun but a verb – life is an astonishingly complex material process, constantly changing.

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Biography

Lynn Margulis is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of more than one hundred articles and ten books, including Symbiosis in Cell Evolution (second edition 1993).

Dorion Sagan, general partner of Sciencewriters, is the author of Biospheres (1990). Together they are the authors of Microcosmos (California, 1996), What Is Sex? (1990), Garden of Microbial Delights (1995), and Mystery Dance (1991).