The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life

Davies, a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist, synthesises the most current thinking on the relationship between information and life. He argues that understanding living systems requires a new concept of information that goes beyond Shannon's mathematical formalism — one that accounts for meaning, context, and causal power. The book connects Maxwell's demon and thermodynamics to epigenetics, quantum biology, and the search for a definition of life that could guide astrobiology. Davies engages seriously with the work of Walker, Cronin, and other researchers attempting to formalise the difference between living and non-living matter in informational terms. Written two decades after Loewenstein's Touchstone of Life, it represents the most updated and accessible treatment of the information-life connection, incorporating developments in systems biology and the physics of information that have emerged since the turn of the century.