Although we won’t answer the question of life’s origin (still a mystery), we will see that all life on earth can be traced to a common single-celled ancestral species, sharply delineating what a science of life’s origin will ultimately need to explain. This will lead us to examine life from the broadly applicable thermodynamic perspective developed in previous chapters, making clear that living things share a deep kinship not just with one another but with stars and steam engines too: life is one more means the universe employs to release the entropy potential locked within matter.
