This fascinating work, co-authored by a Nobel Prize winning scientist, extends Darwin's ideas on natural selection back into evolutionary time and applies them to the molecular "fossil record" that preceded the origin of life. Using the techniques of molecular biology, the book demonstrates that life on Earth is the inevitable result of certain chance events that took place in the unique history of our planet. Furthermore, researchers can not only precisely formulate the laws governing the emergence of life, but also test them under controlled laboratory conditions. In fact, the authors show how it is perfectly possible to construct evolutionary accelerators that optimize the conditions for certain events and which can be used to demonstrate their theoretical conclusions in laboratory experiments. The book is organized into three sections. Each of the 10 chapters in the first section are introduced by quotations from Thomas Mann's classic novel The Magic Mountain, a work that is deeply concerned with the themes presented here in scientific form. In the second part, important biological ideas form the themes of 15 colorfully illustrated vignettes, which can be read separately or as elaborations on the first section. The final section summarizes key events in the history of molecular biology and includes an extensive glossary of technical terms. Written for a wide audience, and already highly successful in the original German edition, this book brings fresh insight to the search for evolutionary origins. General readers will find it clear and accessible, as will students and scientists in biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and evolution.
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"Valuable as a succinct account of recent advances in research on the origins of life undertaken from the perspective of extreme reductionism." --Metascience
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Original Language: German --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Origin of life: how simple molecules started to replicate,
By A Customer
This review is from: Steps towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution (Paperback)
This is a short book, but full of facts and insights. Eigen presents his ideas about the origin of life, i.e. how "inorganic" molecules started to replicate and fill the earth. The book is full of ingenious new concepts, backed in almost every case by biochemical experimental results (this is something Stuart Kauffman seldoms does: At Home in the Universe is about the same chemical/biochemical processes, but only about consepts, no data to back the ideas). Eigen's book is concise, even too terse. Some knowledge of (bio)chemistry is absolutely required, as the arguments in the book are not just hand waving but show equations and sequences (for those with more verbal approach to evolution, Claus Emmeche book "The Garden in the Machine" gives a good discussion on the relationship between the real life and the artificial model systems used to study it.)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eigen's great insight into the origin of life,
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This review is from: Steps towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution (Paperback)
Eigen's little book is a gem. He explains some of his influential ideas about the quantitative conditions necessary for the onset of Darwinian evolution in an initially lifeless, purely chemical, system. This is, of course, the key question for understanding the origin of life. His crucial idea is fairly simple, but nevertheless it is rarely fully grasped by most biologists, and still less the general public. It is one of the great ideas of science, along with f = ma and e = mc squaredRather than reviewing the book in detail, I will explain the key idea, which centers around the question of the accuracy of molecular replication. Note carefully that Eigen does NOT equate the origin of life with the first appearance of polynucleotide (eg RNA) replication, but instead with the appearance of catalysts (themselves almost certainly folded polynucleotides) which reduce the copying error rate to less than the reciprocal of the polynucleotide length n. I will let this sink in. What he is saying is that Life is not quite the same as molecular replication, because if polynucleotides self replicate insufficiently accurately, then over time the errors will build up, and prevent the growth, and even survival, of the most efficiently replicating sequence. But if successive rounds of (inevitably not completely accurate) replication do not allow survival of the "fittest" sequence(s), then evolution is not possible. Instead, despite the fact that individual bases are being copied with great (but not complete) accuracy, the overall outcome, in the long run, is that completely random sequences are generated by copying - a purely chemical process, with no Darwinian evolution. To a good approximation the error rate for copying individual bases must be less than 1/n. One can see this by considering a fixed size population. If all the molecules are copied, with a per base error rate e, then the probability that a correct copy is generated is (1-e) to the power n. Since in order to keep the population constant, one must throw away half the replicas, the only way that a sequence can survive indefinitely is when this probability exceeds 1/2. To a very good approximation, this means e < 1/n. Our genome has an effective length = 6 billion, and our sperm and eggs do indeed, almost miraculously, copy our dna with an accuracy around 1 part in 6 billion (similar to the accuracy of the best determined constants in physics). However it took 4 billion years to evolve such accuracy (or at least to produce us), via a series of steps some of which Eigen lucidly describes.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A FAMOUS BIOCHEMIST'S EXTENSION OF MONOD'S BOOK,
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This review is from: Steps towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution (Paperback)
Manfred Eigen (born 1927) is a German biophysicist who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.He states in the Preface to this 1992 book, "It is perfectly appropriate to speak of the 'era of molecular biology.' There is no shortage of excellent descriptions of this modern subject ... The only thing lacking in this new knowledge is its integration into a general understanding of Nature. Such an attempt has been undertaken only once, by Jacques Monod. [see his Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology] This was a fascinating and ambitious attempt, in which Monod did not shrink from drawing philosophical conclusions. It culminated in an apotheosis of chance.... This book takes up the theme of Monod, whose plain language put many issues into clear perspective. But we shall not persist in proclaiming the omnipotence of chance, which has ruled over physics on the microscopic level..." He writes, "In order to deny the possibility of a natural origin of life, one would have to be acquainted with all the historically possible conditions and then to show that there is no catalytic mechanism that under ANY of these sets of conditions could have carried out the desired task. Such a proof is hardly conceivable, on account of the enormous number of possible mechanisms and conditions that would have to be excluded. But the possibility of such a proof can itself be disproved." (pg. 37-38) He later adds, "The origin of life cannot simply be defined as the transition from inanimate to animate matter. For one thing, the transition as such cannot be pinpointed, as it is a gradual one." (pg. 48) Eigen states, "The new theme which this book has taken up is the detailed description of selection and evolution. Without this detail, the complexity and teleonomy of life would be incomprehensible. The old theme is and will remain Darwin's idea: the principle of evolution by natural selection." (Pg. 125) He concludes on the note, "The frequently raised question 'Creation OR evolution?' thus stems from a non-existent contradiction, since the word 'or' implies a confrontation between two incommensurable projections. I am well aware that these questions have occupied a central position in the subjective consciousness of many people. Nevertheless, although I am frequently asked about such matters, I have in this book left them untouched. Banal replies such as 'Evolution is the realization of creation by means of natural law' do little to satisfy, or to help, those who are seeking answers on this matter. They are in fact asking about something quite different, problems for which science offers no solution." (pg. 127)
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