In famous publications, The Animate and the Inanimate is a 131-page "thermodynamic theory of life" book written in 1920 by American 200+ IQ prodigy William James Sidis. It was published in 1925 by The Gorham Press. [1] In this book, adding to the various theories of existence, Sidis set forth the view that life is a "reversal of the second law of thermodynamics". This was the only published book by Sidis in which he used his own name. [2]

Stimulus to publish
Sidis stated that he was at first hesitant to publish this theory, but that he gained confidence on discovering the following quotation by William Thomson, i.e. Lord Kelvin:

"It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . . the influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms."

Overview
Building on the "reserve energy" theories of American psychologist William James, in which a person is theorized to have latent mental stores of energies (such as second or third winds of thought), along with English physicist William Thomson's views on life and the second law, and Scottish physicist James Maxwell's conception of an intelligent demon able to circumnavigate the second law, Sidis used a theory of probability to argue that a vital force exists in living matter able to supply available energy, in a converse manner to entropy (unavailable energy) such that "animal life acts the part of Clerk-Maxwell's sorting demon". [1]

References
1. Sidis, William J. (1920). The Animate and the Inanimate, 131-pgs, (published in 1925, R.G. Badger).