Abstract
It is the end of a warm summer day. The sun has set and night is falling over the countryside. In a meadow—now cool—thousands of fireflies are climbing awkwardly up the blades of grass in preparation for their nocturnal adventures. Soon they spread their wings and fill the air with countless flashing lights that form pattern after pattern in the darkness: an endless display of luminescent intercourse. Sitting in the shadows and watching, we wonder at the source of this light. Clearly it is a far more subtle phenomenon than the light from the glassblower’s oven that we looked at in the previous chapter. Where does the light come from? What turns it on and off? If we could answer such questions, would we know anything about the nature of consciousness?
Biology does not deny chemistry, though chemistry is inadequate to explain biological phenomena. Ruth Benedict
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Scott, A. (1995). The Chemistry of Life. In: Stairway to the Mind. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2510-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2510-2_3
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