PREFACE xix 



of my own task to draw a large number of specialists together 

 in correspondence and in a series of personal conferences and 

 discussions; and whatever merits this volume may possess are 

 partly due to their generous response in time and thought to 

 my invitation. Their suggestions are duly acknowledged in 

 footnotes throughout the text. I have myself approached the 

 problem through a synthesis of astronomy, geology, physics, 

 chemistry, and biology. 



In consulting authorities on this subject I have made one 

 exception, namely, the problem of the origin of life itself with 

 its vast literature going back to the ancients — I have read none 

 of it and quoted none of it. In order to consider the problem 

 from a fresh and unbiassed point of view, I have also purposely 

 refrained from reading any of the recent and authoritative 

 treatises of Schafer,^ Moore,'- and others on the origin of life. 

 It will be interesting for the reader to compare the conclusions 

 previously reached by these distinguished chemists with those 

 presented in the following pages. 



For invaluable guidance in the phenomena of physics I 

 am deeply indebted to my colleague Professor Michael I. 

 Pupin, of Columbia University, who has given me his views 

 as to the fundamental relation of Newton's laws of motion to 

 the modern laws of heat and energy (thermodynamics), and has 

 clarified the laws of action, reaction, and interaction from the 

 physical standpoint. Without this aid I could never have 

 developed what I believe to be the new biological principle set 

 forth in this work. I owe to him the confirmation of the use 

 of the word interaction as a physical term, which had occurred 

 to me first as a biological term. 



' Schafer, Sir Edward A., Life, Its Nature, Origin, and Maintenance, Longmans, Green 

 & Co., New York, igi2. 



-Moore, Benjamin, The Origin and Nature of Life, Henr}' Holt & Co., New York; 

 Williams & Norgate, London, 1913. 



