num_pages: 192
description: Why has life evolved?Why do living things grow, reproduce and heal?Why this striving to survive?Does the material world have a transcendent dimension?This richly-illustrated book asserts that biological materialism — the idea that the richness of the living world is fully explained by impersonal processes acting over vast periods of time — blinds us to the intensely mindful qualities of purpose and goal-centredness displayed by even the simplest living things. Challenging the materialist’s message of mindless, motive­less mechanicity, Life’s X Factor will intrigue both specialist and lay readers who want science to take more seriously those mysterious but unmistakably intentional attributes of living systems.Professor Neil Broom is Head of the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Auckland, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
language: English
title: Life's X Factor: The Missing Link in Materialism's Science of Living Things
publisher: Steele Roberts Publisher