How We Come to Be : Almost Everything that Leads to Our Existence

Our existence as living beings - thinking, feeling, acting - is an extraordinary thing: this book provides a scientifically based account of the entirety of factors that lead to our existence.The text begins with the physical foundations of our existence, examining the cosmological context of the vast expanding and evolving universe, enabling the existence of the Sun and the Earth.It goes on to summarise the underlying physics and chemistry, explaining behaviour on an atomic and molecular level, and considers the nature of biological emergence, arguing that all complex systems are modular hierarchical structures, allowing function to emerge at every level, and both upward and downward interactions occur between emergent levels.The book then goes on to examine fundamental processes such as metabolism, dealing with material and energy needs, and homeostasis, stabilising the system against perturbing influences.At the molecular level, this is all enabled by change of shape of macromolecul