"The study of living matter is at the center of all current scientific efforts. Recent triumphs include the cloning of Dolly the sheep and acquisition of the complete sequence of three billion nucleotides of the human chromosomes.1 But strangely, life itself is not the object of much study. Scientists seem to take the existence of life for granted. It is difficult to find any extended discussion on the essence of life in currently available monographs or textbooks. These publications explain well how living matter is put together and how its components function. But such information is not enough to explain life because the constituents of living matter themselves are lifeless."