Customer Reviews

The FIFTH MIRACLE: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You can't fault Paul Davies for a lack of gumption. Anyone who'd subtitle his latest book, "the search for the origin and meaning of life" isn't in need of any assertiveness training courses. When I first picked up the book, I thought, "Yeesh, a physicist, writing about the origins of life. Wouldn't that be more the work of a molecular biologist?" But as I read on, I was gradually taken in by Davies spell.

And that's saying something. If, five years ago, you'd told me I'd take the following ideas seriously, I'd have laughed nervously and edged away in a non-threatening manner. Here are Davies' ideas in a nutshell (no pun intended):

1) Life may have existed on Mars. 2) Life may still exist on Mars. 3) Life on earth may have arisen in space and migrated here (panspermia) 4) The "natural" home for life on earth may be in the hot depths of the crust, kilometres beneath the surface.

As I say, five years ago, those ideas would have been heresy. But it's been an interesting five years. The (in)famous martian meteorite, the discovery of tiny, primitive forms of life deep within the earth, life thriving around hydrothermal vents, the discovery of intricate chemical reactions happening in space ... well, it's been fun. And Davies takes full advantage of living in such "interesting times".

Davies makes a thoughtful (if not always persuasive) case for his views on the origins of life. And I found it a really enjoyable read. If you're at all interested in where life came from, or whether there might be life "out there" this is a great book to begin with. Davies is an excellent writer with some fascinating ideas and a great style:

"In a subject supercharged with such significance, lack of agreement is unsurprising. Some scientists regard life as a bizarre chemical freak, unique in the universe, whereas others insist that it is the expected product of felicitous natural laws. If the magnificent edifice of life is the consequence of a random and purely incidental quirk of fate, as the French biologist Jacques Monod claimed, we must surely find common cause with his bleak atheism, so eloquently expressed in these words: "The ancient covenant is in pieces: man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he has emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been written down." But if it transpires that life emerged more or less on cue as part of the deep lawfulness of the cosmos -- if it is scripted into the great cosmic drama in a basic manner -- it hints at a universe with a purpose. In short, the origin of life is the key to the meaning of life."

And while I might not agree with all his ideas ... ask me again in five years.

The Fifth Miracle by Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist who works primarily on the topic of quantum gravity, is a very readable book on the origin of life. Although there is little that is new in the text, the author has put the information into perspective for the reader, discussing a number of aspects and points of view. Probably one of the most salient points he makes is that if , as some would have us believe, life is ubiquitous to the universe to the extent that water equals life, then the basic scientific world view may have to be overhauled. He writes:

In claiming that water means life, NASA scientists are not merely being upbeat about their project. They are making--tacitly--a huge [italics] and profound assumption about the nature of nature. They are saying, in effect, that the laws of the universe are cunningly contrived to coax life into being against the raw odds; that the mathematical principles of physics, in their elegant simplicity, somehow know in advance about life and its vast complexity. If life follows from soup with causal dependability, the laws of nature encode a hidden subtext, a cosmic imperative, which tells them: 'Make life!' And, through life, its by-products: mind, knowledge, understanding. It means the laws of the universe have engineered their own comprehension. This is a breathtaking vision of nature, magnificent and uplifting in its majestic sweep. I hope it is correct. It would be wonderful if it were correct. But if it is, it represents a shift in the scientific world-view as profound as that initiated by Copernicus and Darwin put together. It should not be glossed over with glib statements that water plus organics equals life, obviously, for it is far from obvious (p. 246).

This book and Rare Earth by Peter Douglas Ward and Donald Brownlee pretty much cover the life in the universe topic for anyone interested in the topic, and both are engagingly written and understandable.

It's a breezy introductory work by a person very much at the current heart of the debate, and as such is a good recommendation. The problem is that it is a popular book directed at the common reader, nothing difficult, nothing particularly new or stimulating. It is right at the interface of evolutionary biology and abiogenesis, as such would be a good entry level book for a high school student who would like to learn more about the broad subject material without being bogged down in the details of the controversies. He seems to hit all the important issues in the topic, shows that he has thought deeply about the subject material and is really interested in the reader getting the gist of the debate elements. The big advantage is completeness of coverage, the drawback is the shallowness of each chapter, where you really want to know more about what Davies has thought about.

The fifth miracle is an outstanding little book that discloses a miriad of possibilities about the origin of life on earth. The controversy arises when Davis exposes some unorthodox theories like Panspermia, the truth is that when he does that he is really persuasive. Paul Davies is an intelligent scientist and one that has kept updated and with experience on field, so his arguments are no less than powerful and convincing, once again, even the controversial ones. Though he doesn't take part in most of the different theories explained, his book might look a little biased, but great, besides he may even be right.

This is a very good book; an interesting journey through the great riddle of where and how life may have started off mostly based on darwinism. The book not only deals with where life may have possibley come from but also how this amazing feature of the cosmos came to be. The more you read Paul Davies's honest inferences the more Godliness surrounds it. Its not enough to know where life started. Possibly as an ultra heat loving microbe (hyperthermophiles) living thousands of feet below the ground or a traveler from outerspace. But perhaps more profoud a question is how that initial being developed into todays's inscrutably complex machine known as the human being? How did biological information get there (DNA) and how what set up the complex facilities that transalate that information into biologically meaningful and intelligent beings? Are there laws of biology at work unknown to us? Is life a natural reaction or some wild a fluke that it couldn't happen twice in the universe? But it would have been nice if Davies had reflected more on thories of the mind and how that relates to cosmic conditioning and biological development. If mind is out there somewher with space-time and gravity then perhaps it somehow determined our existance. A concept davies does not get into here but I read it in his book, "God & The New Physics' as retroactie creativity

Davies delivers a decent book reflecting the current state of biogenesis theory: basically more questions than answers. He does seem to stand steadfastly under the mantle of Darwinism yet at the sametime shake at its very foundations. He offers a rather good description of the two opposing world views and current battle: life as an isolated accident vs. biological determinism (life was inevitable). For more on a biological anthropic priniciple I would suggest "Nature's Destiny" by Michael Denton. All in all I would say "The Fifth Miracle" is a very interesting read and overview; certainly more open & honest than other Darwinists about problems with Darwinian theory & Biogenesis.

One side note I do have, was an unnecessary ideological statement made in the book saying, "You are, for example, host to a billion or so atoms that once belonged to Jesus Christ,.." (p.147) because atoms from dead organisms are recycled into the environment and us. The implication of course being that Jesus died and in fact decomposed, which Christians obviously don't believe to be the case. Davies is free to dispute that yet in the context he uses it merely for inflammatory purposes.

According to the book of Genesis, God's fifth act of creation was to create life on earth. Modern science has a different myth. In the beginning, there was a simple soup of inorganic chemicals: water, ammonia and methane. And into this soup came a bolt of lightning that brought into being the amino acids that gradually assembled themselves into peptides and proteins, and the nucleotides from which came RNA and DNA. And the DNA learned the art of becoming self-replicating and so began the ascent of life.

In this well-reasoned book, the distinguished physicist Paul Davies suggests that believing the scientific myth demands an act of faith and credulity as great as believing in the literal truth of the Biblical story. He is one of many scientists who have calculated the seemingly impossible odds of all this happening by chance. This is not some back door into intelligent design, but instead an exploration of some profoundly important ideas in biology that make us realize that there are some gaping holes in our current models.

Paul Davies starts with some questions: is life a random chemical accident, a meaningless fluke in an accidental universe? Or is the universe somehow "friendly" to biology? Are the laws of nature such that they demand the eventual appearance of life, not just on earth, but also throughout the universe? The book does not come up with a definitive answer, but it explores some very interesting ideas, including the well-known concepts of the late Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe that life may have arrived from space. It is a puzzle how life seems to have appeared so soon after the earth became a stable globe, and the remarkable adaptability of living organisms to the most astonishingly inhospitable environments.

Inorganic processes tend to run down and become disorganized over time: they show entropy. By contrast living processes become progressively more organized, a process that requires massive amounts of information. It is not difficult to calculate that the amount of information required for even the simplest organism far out strips the biochemical processes of an organism. Thus the implication that life requires a new fundamental law of nature that is yet to be discovered.

Paul Davies does not shy away from discussing the consequences of these ideas or an undiscovered law or laws that would make the appearance of life inevitable. And would also imply a progressive march toward greater and greater complexity, that would eventually lead to sentience.

This book does not provide any final answers, but is an excellent introduction to an exceedingly important topic.

Paul Davies is a good writer because he recognizes that the best science topics yield more than one answer. This book explores several likely explanations for the origin of life. What is particularly interesting about Davies's coverage is that he sees life primarly as an information processing phenomenon. For the paradox of life becomes that it must be based upon a random pattern of information, but that pattern is not so random as to be chaotic and meaningless. Life walks the tightrope over the abyss of total disorder and below the ceiling of completely predictable information. Neither is suitable for life. The reader doesn't find any absolute answers here. But for a thought-provoking discussion on the meaning of what constitutes a living thing, the book does an excellent job.

This book is a little dated [published in 1999 and now 2009] but still worth reading as a recap on abiogenesis as of the early 90's.
I think it overemphasizes the "life from space/Mars" faction a little, but I appreciate the plausibility that Davies brings forth re Panspermia as opposed to my own prejudice that these ideas involve too many miracles in a row.
Written as it was when, simultaneously, Information Science/Biology were rapidly being assimilated by all the various disciplines upon whose domains the abiogenesis question[s] border; and the overconfidence of the Genome reading successes of that time, this book provides a somewhat optimistic outlook on the imagined success of science to frame the question of the origin of life as we know it.
Very light on the technical details of the various theories of evolution, especially their roles in speciation and unique root of the origin of life. I expect that even the educated layman will have to consult Steve Gould and his cohorts for comprehensive threads of the evolution idea at these levels. [and/or more recent works by Molecular Biologists]
I am in search myself of a book at the educated layman level that extends the central themes initiated by Davies. The reader of Davies' book will probably be adequately equipped to put much of it in the category to which it belongs, ie long on speculation and short on any possibility of empirical verification. I was disappointed with the book's development of these theories from the point of view of Information Theory and Entropy. Much more was known even at the time of the writing about critical systems. Perhaps Davies, a physicist after all, eschewed a more mathematical treatment that such discussion would entail. He does know how to sell books. The writing is excellent and the "objectivity"is certainly admirable.

Approaching this book with some trepidation, it proved a surprisingly good read. Davies is a lucid writer, adroit with words and descriptions. His 'chatty' approach brings the reader to his way of thinking with deceptive ease. He even provides an impressive chapter on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a daunting topic at any time. Describing how the Second Law should be properly addressed in the biological realm, the chapter is a quiver of arrows effectively countering the anti-Darwinists who cite the Law in refuting evolution by natural selection. He also manages to explain, as no-one else has done, how we know certain meteorites originated on Mars. All this fine work is undermined by his conclusion. The title, of course, gives the game away. If you don't know what the other four miracles are, you have to read his Preface. Or his source.

Davies opens by expressing his disappointment with "science" not having "wrapped up the mysteries of life's origins." He doesn't make clear why he held this opinion, claiming to have spent "a year or two researching the topic." He then summarizes the various theories offered on life's origins ranging from Darwin's "warm little pond" through Urey and Miller's laboratory generation of amino acids to Graham Cairns Smith's crystalline model of molecular replication. Each little digest of various research efforts are closed with Davies carefully dismantling each result as failing to provide the answer he seeks. Davies is not alone in his dissatisfaction. The numerous concepts offered on life's origins suggests how vital this question remains throughout the realm of science. It's not surprising that he finds a near solution in the "replicating molecule" attached to growing crystals first proposed by Graham Cairns Smith. This idea has the advantage of showing how organic life superceded simple chemical organizations. For Davies, it has the added benefit of being applicable to any place in the universe where conditions permit such organization and replication to occur.

Davies eschews mainstream expressions about divine origins for life. In its quest, even in Davies' critical eye, science has shown that simplistic metaphysical answers are no answer at all. Evolution is an accepted fact, as is the Big Bang. The mechanism of evolution by natural selection, which Davies insists on shortcutting to "Darwinism", is, in the words of Dobzhansky, "the answer to all complex questions about life." Except one: how did it start? Davies is a bit heavy-handed in scoffing at science's failure to solve this quest. Throughout the book he portrays scientists "scratching their heads" or "wringing their hands", actions scientists actually engage in only when suffering from dandruff or washing up for dinner. Scientists probe for answers, they don't throw up their hands in despair when research fails to provide explanations to their questions. They try again. In the final analysis, Davies is hugely unjust to the scientific community. He owes many colleagues in biology and related fields a humble apology. Scenarios of the early conditions of Earth's environment are still undergoing revision. He dismisses the work of Urey and Miller by showing their concept of our planet's early atmosphere has been replaced by new theses. That's how science moves along. If we don't have an answer for life's origins yet, then it may come from further work. Since we can't duplicate the conditions, we may never find that answer.

Davies' own solution, after guiding us through a litany of science's failures, boils down to the reason he's the winner of the Templeton Prize. In the Preface, he wants to fit life, particularly human life, into a 'grand scheme'. This 'grand scheme' accepts the idea that life will emerge anywhere in the universe when conditions permit. We live, therefore, in a "universe of information." Contending that the laws of physical and chemical operations are too simple and general to produce life, some information source must have brought about a new level of organization. Darwin's concluded The Origin of Species with the comment, "light will be thrown on the origin of man," a statement imbued with meaning. Davies' own concluding words, that we live in "a universe in which we are not alone" is no less meaningful. He leaves mooted what the implications of this universal information source might be. However, his vivid depictions of "baffled" scientists failing to discover the origins of life leave few options. Davies leaves us to define the "information source" for ourselves.