This book has for the first time disclosed mechanisms for the emergence and the evolution of life on the earth. In particular, mechanisms for the emergence of the first living organism on the primitive earth are provided on a molecular level and therefore they can in principle be examined by experiments. Furthermore, it is shown that the mechanisms are given definite support by the fact that almost all chemical reactions in the present living things demonstrate an outstanding feature in that they have extremely high rates for the forward and backward processes by catalytic acts of enzymes and are in or near equilibrium. Such a great success has been achieved based on a new discovery that a stationary state of an open non-equilibrium macroscopic system lying close to equilibrium has the internal ability to organize itself so that it realizes a well-organized smooth and efficient state. A living organism can be regarded as a reaction system in a stationary state. Thus, the above discovery provides the key basic principle for explaining the emergence and the evolution of life. The discovery has been obtained by interpreting the law of a minimum entropy production rate in a stationary state from an absolutely novel standpoint. To date, it has been believed that highly ordered structures in living organisms are produced against the second law of thermodynamics (the law of increase of entropy). Thus, keen attention has been paid to self-organization in dissipative structures or in complex systems. Amazingly, it is not true that living things emerged and evolved against the second law of thermodynamics. The truth is that living things emerged and evolved according to the second law of thermodynamics under a particular condition. Originally, the second law of thermodynamics is the only universal law that describes spontaneous and irreversible processes in nature. Therefore, it is the most reasonable to explain the origin and the evolution of life based on this law. This book also shows that the above discovery leads to convincing solutions to many important problems that have been left unsolved to date, such as where the origin of human ego is, how creation is achieved, and how we can produce artificial intelligence with free spirit and creativity, apart from the emergence and the evolution of life.
About the Author: The author was born in Matsusaka, Mie, Japan in 1942. He graduated from Osaka University in 1965 and received his Dr from Osaka University in 1972. He was made an assistant professor at Osaka University in 1969 and was promoted to a full professor in 1990. His research has been in physical chemistry, in particular, in photochemistry, semiconductor photoelectrochemistry, solar energy conversion, and nonlinear chemical dynamics. He published a large number of research papers in international academic journals. He also wrote many books in collaboration. In addition, he wrote some books (in Japanese) by himself: "A Method of Improving Creativity", Daigaku Kyo-iku Shuppan, Okayama (2001); "Electrochemistry - A Basis for Light Energy Conversion", Tokyo-Kagaku-Dojin, Tokyo (2016). He got awards for scientific achievements from the Chemical Society of Japan, the Photochemistry Association, and the Electrochemical Society of Japan.