Customer Reviews

Vital Dust: The Origin And Evolution Of Life On Earth

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
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Ever since Charles Darwin postulated the beginnings of life in "some warm little pond" science has probed into origin mechanisms. As it became clearer that life is a molecular phenomenon, researchers have delved deeper into chemical processes to work out life's start. De Duve joins that quest with a detailed examination of these mechanisms and the environments in which they come about. In his explanation of life's origins, it becomes clear that the mechanisms leading to life are common. Earth, therefore, is not alone - "the universe is awash with life". If conditions are right, and many of the processes can't go forward unless the environment permits them to, life at some level is sure to begin. "Life is one", he stipulates, but likely in many places.

De Duve's narrative is highly detailed in the opening sections. The conditions and operations he describes are fundamental to life's development. How carbon-based molecules interact in ways that led to replication, then selection, are carefully explained. While many of the early steps were random, perhaps even chaotic, "superior" [because they survived and replicated better] molecular structures became more common. While he notes there are preferred environments for this process, they aren't tightly limited. Change of environment formed selection pressures which even early life could respond to without difficulty. While at first glance this description may appear an account of many chance events, De Duve points out that life started on a "deterministic" path almost from the beginning. The rules of chemical reactions limit what chance can impose. Yet, once the start has been made, similar rules force the process of life forward.

This book is a major statement and deserves serious consideration. That this is a technically challenging read should not discourage you. A thorough analysis of life's development, right up to that major achievement of evolution, the human mind, de Duve demonstrates how important knowledge of ourselves is to our survival. He further postulates that values are an essential part human evolution, including wisdom, love, and responsibility for our place in nature. True science, he argues, supports a sense of moral values, it doesn't abandon nor avoid them. Learning about origins of life as a fact of chemistry doesn't reduce it to sterility nor meaninglessness. These ideas aren't necessarily novel with de Duve, but he expresses them better than most. He also provides a better foundation for believing in them than most. A valuable book, it's one that should be considered vital for any student of nature or philosophy. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Duve's thesis is that life springs naturally from the universe. As he concludes: "Life is either a reproducible, almost commonplace manifestation of matter, given certain conditions, or a miracle. Too many steps are involved to allow for something in between."

The best part of the book is early on, when Duve exercises his expertise in biochemistry and discusses how life must have come into existence and made the first moves toward complexity. This is difficult but rewarding reading, and a section I think I will be returning to.

The final chapters, discussing the future of mankind, environmental issues, and the nature of consciousness, are almost entirely derivative, consisting of rehashed thoughts of others rather than original concepts or explanations.

Still the book is well worth it just for the understanding of how life might have come to be and how it developed into what it is today. Recommended.

The meat of this book is the first 200 pages which describe in depth the origin and evolution of single celled organisms. I used to wonder why there seemed to be so little evolution till multicellular organisms evolved but this book shows that this is an illusion; most biochemistry was "invented" by single celled organisms. Particularly interesting are the description of why and how eukaryotes evolved, and the discussion of the origin of sex. The later evolution is covered in less detail but is still a good read. The best book on evolution I have read, and better than "Microcosmos" by Margulis and Sagan.

This book is structured along the time line from anaerobic times to multi-celled organism. In addition to its primary topic of how life evolved from plants and bacteria to multi-celled, it also discusses the external environment's role in "driving" the evolution of life. Dr. de Duve uses a most wonderful writing device by citing MODERN organisms (Giardia), things we can study TODAY, to illustrate ancient organisms and our cellular metabolism. He established the unbroken chain from waaaaay back when to now.

I wanted to know how we 'learned' to 'make' mitochondria, and other very important symbionts. His chapter Oxygen Crisis in combination with The Guests Who Stayed explained it. His chapter on Membranes gave me a whole new view of the importance of membranes, another huge body of knowledge that I must study-up.

Please do pay attention to his wonderfully helpful "end matter," bibliography, glossary and Further Reading. Do read carefully his comments about Further Reading: it ranges from books on cosmology (another of my enthusiasms), through biochem, molecular bio, cell structures, evolution... all the way to Philosophy. It shows the common thread through all these fields of science. The suggested reading includes his own illustrated book, "A Guided Tour of the Living Cell," ISBN: 0716750023. It's a Scientific American product so you can rely on excellent illustrations.

"Vital Dust" is comprehensive in scope without being superficial (unlike so many trade books on science), and written by a real scientist (not journalist) and Nobel Prize winner "for [his]discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell." A pdf of his Nobel lecture is downloadable from the Nobel [...]

This book has plenty of detail as well being thought provoking and well-written, but an undergrad bio, or biochem background would help you get more out of it. Even so, it warrants several readings.

Contemplating the past, analyzing the present, and predicting the future. These are the things that are done in Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve's book, Vital Dust: The Origin and Evolution of Life on Earth. He masterfully splits the story of life on Earth into seven different ages. The first, the Age of Chemistry, creates and sets up the basic pieces of life. The Age of Information selects these pieces and arranges the best of them using natural selection to create important molecules such as ATP, RNA, DNA, and proteins. These and other important molecules come together to build other important features of future life including the membranous enclosures which culminates in the Age of the Protocell and the ancestor to all life on Earth. Next is the Age of the Single Cell with the manifestation of bacteria, achaea, and eventually the eukaryotes. The eukaryotes begin to find huge advantages to working together and using sexual reproduction to evolve very rapidly and divulge into more and more complex organisms in the Age of Multicellular Organisms, leading to the human takeover. Further human evolution, this time a cultural one, leads into the Age of the Mind where our consciences may not have control. The Age of the Unknown takes us on a journey where humans are abusing all life around and extraterrestrial life, if we can reach it, may or may not exist. Throughout the book, de Duve allows room for all major theories about the controversial subjects while also adding his own comments and theories on the same subjects. He tries his hardest to let the reader find his or her own way of figuring out where life came from and where it is going.

I found this book to be quite informative and well written. The one small complaint I have about "Vital Dust" is its sparse use of diagrams and illustrations, hence the 4 star rating rather than 5. Otherwise, I found this book to be excellent. I am a research life scientist, so had little trouble with Dr de Duve's explanations, but feel the work would be more accessible to the general reader with more illustrations. This is such an interesting book, that I would hate for someone to be "put off" of it because of technical language.

His main argument is that the universe, due to its biological design, must have produced life, yet also suggests that, once life had come to be, it should not be expected to happen again.

While he up front denies a creative intelligence at the beginning, he invokes far too much chance (in my opinion) in the bringing about of conditions conducive to life's genesis.

His introduction admits his method is inductive, rather than deductive.

He uses much conjecture, and fills many blanks lacking in hard scientific support with it. This itself didn't bother me as much as did the logical liberties he took in his reasoning (too frequently he went from using possibility words such as "perhaps," "seems to," "in all likelihood," "chances are" to jumping to absolute conclusion words like "obviously," "impossible" - I found that the hasty result of an apparent aim to substantiate with language what was beyond substantiation with science itself).

He demands that all life is a product of the same natural biological processes, as understandable as any other, "including man," yet at the same time he considers "mind" to be beyond comprehension, wholly unlike any other.

He recognizes the problems that his biological necessity platform presents in the discussion of morality, meaning, free will.

But, good reading, with a balance of technical biology and layman-readability.

Excellent writer. Describes technical subjects very well to the layman. I just felt as though the leaps and bounds made to get from a world of primal soups containing only chemicals, to the first self-replicating organisms, had too many wide open stretches in it. Then he went into top gear and screamed through the rest. So, obviously, the scientific community has a lot of historical work left to fill in the blanks.

But de Duve has certainly provided a great basis for explaining what the earliest known life story might be. Just don't expect to take this and use it to slam-dunk refute any anti-evolutionists' arguments. I have only taken molecular chemistry, organic chemistry, introductory nuclear engineering and materials engineering and de Duve's explanations in too many cases went beyond my grasp. But I'm extra dense......

Christian De Duve answers questions you've always wondered about. He does his best to provide a complete picture while being honest about the leaps of imagination he has to take. I love when he asks us to wonder more at the becoming of a bee, not at the few primitive motions it makes to build a mud hut. He's a wonderful teacher, carefully helping us build a vocabulary so that we'll appreciate the findings of microbiology. I want to attack the reading list he includes. Who has time for novels now?

This book blew my mind in how de Duve explores chemical evolution as no accident yet 'cosmically' driven. I am a biochemist so have studied much of what this book is about. I've even written and taught glimpses of cell and molecular function. De Duve shares the science almost as magic. He puts the wonder back in how did the genetic code develop. After all, how did 4 chemicals 'decide' to encrypt building blocks of life?

This book makes you think by its posing how life was built from dry dust of Earth. It is truly a gift for the biologist who knows there's more to life than only chemicals and cells. It's a gift for the theologian for it leaves room for G-d in the picture.

Finding this book has made my day especially since I'm writing my own Cell book - Cells and the Sacred. Nobel prize winning de Duve EXPANDS the view of life. There are certainly very dense parts that you can skip of details of protein synthesis etc. Just skip ahead. I did - well worth the trip to become what de Duve calls a 'cytonaut.'