Epilogue

Abstract

The story of the birth of the universe and its evolution from chaos to order, told here, spans some 15 billion years. As one contemplates this vast panorama, in which a world of order, symmetry, and intelligent life arose from disorder, as the culmination of a series of natural events, one is struck by the incredible contrast, bordering on what appears to be incompatibility and antagonism, between one realm of nature, life, and the antagonistic realm of the inanimate universe surrounding us. Every step in the formation of the complex organic molecules that constitute a living organism can be explained in terms of natural laws and the basic electromagnetic forces that govern all chemistry, but an understanding of the essence of life eludes us; therein lies the apparent contradiction between the living and the nonliving. Life is not simply the sum of all the molecules and atoms in a living creature at any one moment and the forces that keep these particles together, as is a stone, but rather a complex, unchanging dynamical pattern—a kind of molecular dance with very precise and well-laid-out steps—that maintains itself from generation to generation.