Essays on Life Sciences, with Related Science Fiction Stories

Pier Luigi Luisi

Jan 2020 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

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This collection of essays highlights, in a new, critical fashion, some of the classic questions in life science. These include “what is life?”; “what is death?”; “what is consciousness?”; “why is life cellular?”; and “why are enzymes macromolecules?”. It also explores whether evolution is pre-determined, whether science and spirituality can harmonize with each other, whether artificial intelligence is at odds with the human spirit, and whether, and to what extent, we are genetically determined. In this text, some of the main conceptual tools used to tackle life’s many aspects are necessarily reviewed, such as the systems view of life, the notion of contingency, and the concept of autopoiesis. Each of the three chapters of the book contains a number of short science fiction stories which discuss aspects of the present-day development of artificial intelligence.

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Pier Luigi Luisi was awarded a degree in Chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy, in 1963. His scientific career took place at the Zurich Federal Institute of Technology, where he taught and researched Macromolecular Chemistry, and he served as Professor of Biochemistry at the Roma Tre University, Italy, from 2003 to 2015. His scientific studies focus on the origin of life, the philosophy of science, autopoiesis, and synthetic biology. His interest in the interface between science and humanism led him to found the Cortona Week, an annual post-graduate residential gathering aimed at forming a new leaders of the future, in 1985. Since 1987, he has been a member of the Mind and Life Institute, which fosters dialogue between science and Buddhism and was founded by Francisco Varela and the Dalai Lama. He is the author of The Emergence of Life (2016) and The Systems View of Life (with Fritjof Capra, 2016).