Photosynthesis is the basis of life on Earth. Thermodynamics is the order and disorder in the universe. Put them together and you have the makings of a book that may re-order the way you think about the world. And that is what Oliver Morton, news editor at Nature (and who once worked for this paper), has done.rnMr Morton's thesis is that modern biology has become so focused on the movement of information, in the form of genes, that it has neglected the processes needed to move that information around: in essence, thermodynamics. People talk glibly of "using up" energy when in fact they are doing no such thing. What is actually used up is order. An energy flow drives the process, but it is disorder (or "entropy", to use the jargon) that changes, by increasing.
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