Publisher's Synopsis
Contemplation and reflection on the processes in nature suggests that some of the complex systems under certain conditions have the ability of self-organization and evolution. The most remarkable example of this is the life on our planet. The task of understanding the origin of life from a very limited set of chemical elements and molecules in a more or less clear and well-simulated conditions of so-called primordial soup seems to be fairly simple, compared to the task of understanding the structure and functioning of the simplest living organisms. Maybe that's how it is. But, nevertheless, this problem is still far from being solved. Perhaps the point is that, despite the false impression of the sufficient understanding of living organisms, in fact, may be modern biology misses some subtle and very important element of the picture, without which it cannot give a clear answer to the famous question Ervin Schrodinger asked: What Is Life? In his groundbreaking book, Farid Zapparov takes the physicochemical and non-linear laws of nature for the revelation of the emergence of life. He explains how the rheological property of living matter accounts for evolution and how all life forms on Earth are governed by the same principle. The book contains a detailed account of the so-called viscoelastic hypothesis of evolution of living systems put forward by Farid earlier in The Food Delusion (2012). If we evaluate the concept of the author using the criterion of the genius physicist Niels Bohr, on whether his theory is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct? - The answer is undoubtedly yes. The ideas presented in the book are perhaps the most original in the science of the origin of life in the last 20 years. Viscoelastic Duende of Life -a captivating tour through the hidden truths of nature which illuminates codependence evolution and viscoelasticity in a living matter. At the same time, all of Zapparov's constructs, despite the exceptional extraordinariness, rely mainly on experimental facts and established theoretical concepts. In The Viscoelastic Duende of Life, Farid sets out the unexpected, fascinating and paradoxical results of the existence of time singularities, the dispersion of the trajectories of systems depending on the scales of processes in non-linear physical and chemical systems, and the viscoelastic autocatalytic process and its role in the origin of life. This produces amazing macro effects when reacting systems behave fantastically in a common sense manner. For the possibility of a living state to emerge, the "future" state of the reacting chemical system must determine its "present" state. The influence of the "future" to the "present" happens through the partial presence of the "future" in immediate "past" of the "present" in the depth of time called the viscoelastic relaxation time. Does it look a bit complicated as time travel extravaganza? It is! But this is possible in viscoelastic systems. Proposed by Zapparov, the concept provides an answer to the eternal questions of how and why everything in life evolves as a sequence of hierarchical ordered structures, which works with the highest efficiency (with a minimum entropy production) in living organisms. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, The Viscoelastic Duende of Life is a paradigm-shifting work that will transform our understanding of the biology. The lucid and popularly accessible text is accompanied by graphs and pictures, which effectively illustrate the authors' points. Researchers, students and the general public will benefit from Farid Zapparov's masterful and reliable contributions to this exciting field of science.
