Mishra, R. K., ed.  The Living State.  New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984.

Abstract

The contents of this book are woven around the idea that the puzzle of the phenomenology exhibited by living organisms is not due to esoteric or mysterious forces but rather they depend upon and ensue from a new description of a state of matter, the Living State. The laws for dynamical transformation and evolution of form are examined by the leaders of almost all schools in the field, viz. Prigogine (far from equilibrium thermodynamics and dissipative structures), Haken (Synergetics), Rene Thom (Catastrophe Theory), Davidov (Solitons), Frölich (Long range coherence). Wald, Sudershan, and Sinha discuss perspectives on consciousness and Morowitz proposes a deterministic view of the evolution of living matter while others propose various other models. Mishra, Clegg, and Gilbert Ling discuss the structural aspects of the Living State. This volume in the main deals with the first ever Seminar on the Living State which tried to co-relate the new emerging vistas of the structure and development of function in living organisms.