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our cosmos. Our universe is a supremely elegant masterwork of ongoing creation. Recognizing the magnificent feat of design engineering it represents, we look at ourselves and the world around us with new wonder and appreciation. Stretching our imagination in this way is useful preparation for our inquiry as we turn to look at our mysterious universe through the lens of science and ask: Is it reasonable to regard our universe as a living system? The pivotal nature of this question is summarized in the following table, which contrasts the perspectives of a dead or a living universe.
    Contrasting a Dead and a Living Universe

Chapter 2
The Science of a Living Universe
    Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science
becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws
of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of men. . .
    â€”A LBERT E INSTEIN 1
    This chapter applies the tools of science to explore the possibility that our universe, taken in its totality, is a living system. I am not seeking to
prove
that the universe is a living system; instead I will show that, by drawing insights from different areas of science, the available evidence
points strongly
in this direction and offers a compelling invitation for deeper engagement and inquiry.
    In thinking about how the universe could be alive, we naturally turn to the living things already known. It is understandable that many of our theories on the nature of life are based on animals and plants; however, to confine our understanding of life to these familiar forms is to confuse the material expression of aliveness with theenergy of aliveness itself. The form is not the aliveness, but its container. We need to broaden our inquiry into the meaning of life.
    As mentioned earlier, it is the very tools of science that are challenging the traditional scientific assumption that the universe is non-living at its foundations. The powerful instruments of science are allowing us to peer down into the realm of atoms as well as out to the realm of stars. What we are discovering is astonishing; the deeper and further we look, the more complex, subtle, mysterious—and alive—the universe appears to be.
    At the outset, it is important to recognize that the idea that we live in a non-living universe is a recent invention. The next chapter makes it clear that, throughout most of human history, we humans did not question whether the world around us was fundamentally alive. Only in the last few centuries that science has made a great separation between ourselves and the rest of the universe, assuming the universe to be mostly non-living matter with only a few islands of life such as ourselves.
    In launching our inquiry, it is important to recognize that, within the scientific community, there is no widely accepted definition of life. To illustrate the difficulty scientists are encountering, there is no clear demarcation between the living and non-living realms. There is considerable debate, for example, over whether a virus is alive. By itself a virus is a non-living entity but when it finds a suitable host—such as a human being—it can rapidly replicate itself (think of the common cold) and evolve into new, more contagious forms. Because the ability to replicate and evolve is fundamental to life, a virus hovers in the gray zone between life and non-life.
    Since we barely understand the mysterious property that we call life, it is not surprising that there is no broadly accepted definition. Is life an invisible energy or is it inseparable from the physical containerof that energy? Many scientists focus on the container and say that living entities are carbon-based creatures that need water, get their energy either from the Sun or from a chemical source, and are able to reproduce themselves. Although this may be a fitting description of life on the Earth, it is such a narrow definition that it leaves little room for the possibility of alternative