Life's Origin: The Beginnings of Biological Evolution (Paperback)

by J. William Schopf (Editor) "There are three major singularities in the world-the observable universe, life on Earth, and human beings..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Universal Tree, Cold Spring Harbor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Each of the six chapters holds the reader's attention. The material, which is presented on the level of an advanced undergraduate, should pique the interest of novices with a science background; advanced practitioners may be reminded of forgotten aspects of the subject . . . .The book's greatest asset is that it assembles such a marvelous group of authors."--"American Scientist"

Product Description
Always a controversial and compelling topic, the origin of life on Earth was considered taboo as an area of inquiry for science as recently as the 1950s. Since then, however, scientists working in this area have made remarkable progress, and an overall picture of how life emerged is coming more clearly into focus. We now know, for example, that the story of life's origin begins not on Earth, but in the interiors of distant stars. This book brings a summary of current research and ideas on life's origin to a wide audience. The contributors, all of whom received the Oparin/Urey Gold Medal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, are luminaries in the fields of chemistry, paleobiology, and astrobiology, and in these chapters they discuss their life's work: understanding the what, when, and how of the early evolution of life on Earth. Presented in nontechnical language and including a useful glossary of scientific terms, Life's Origin gives a state-of-the-art encapsulation of the fascinating work now being done by scientists as they begin to characterize life as a natural outcome of the evolution of cosmic matter.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520233913
• ISBN-13: 978-0520233911
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #597,214 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 101 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking, April 17, 2004

By	Roy Sablosky (takoma park, md USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book just slayed me. A series of beautifully-written and well-supported essays covers, very quickly, the turn-of-the-millennium status of research on the subject of how life got started at the very, very beginning. How did 'pre-biotic' molecules ever get started replicating themselves, eventually turning into 'biotic' molecules? The answers aren't all in, but there's some really exciting work going on; scientists are relentlessly chipping away at the problem and they have made a surprising amoutn of progress. You know, these days the creationists are getting a lot of press. And they keeep hammering on the idea that the pre-biotic genesis of life is simply impossible; it had to require some sort of divine intervention. This is a lie. Take astronomer Fred Hoyle's famous simile -- that the accidental genesis of life would be like a tornado ripping through a junkyard and assembling a 747. While I read 'Life's Origin', I thought often of Hoyle and how much I'd like to throttle him. The origin of life requires NOTHING like the accidental assembly of a jet aircraft. It requires something much more like the lifting of two magnets into the air, so they can snap together, each magnet's noth pole snapping to the other's south. Molecules have natural affinities. They were 'born' to snap together. 99.9% of all the matter in the universe is either carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, or nitrogen: the stuff of life. Once the Earth had cooled down from its fiery birth, life couldn't wait to get started. And once it got started, it was by its very nature almost unstoppable. This is not an easy book. It's written for a lay audience (and there's a helpful glossary at the back), but there's a ton of orgo in it, so if you're not a chemist you had best be a quick study: the kind of layperson who, having once heard (for example) the word 'racemic' defined, can use it in a coherent sentence the following day. If you're that kind of smart, you will get a real kick out of this book. This crazy world is more beautiful -- life is more strange and fantastic and marvelous, than we ever suspected. Read and enjoy.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In a word: disappointing. Should be better, February 16, 2009

By	David C. Bossard "Challenger" (PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In a word: disappointed. I came to this book expecting to see more of the excellent work displayed in Dr. Schopf's previous book, Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth's Earliest Fossils (1999). Instead I found a rehashing of some of the standard, and in my view time-worn theories about the origin of life -- all of which end up rather indefinite, speculative and unsatisfying.

Some of the stuff isn't even accurate: it is not true that "Miller's experiment showed for the first time that amino acids can be produced under simulated 'primitive Earth conditions'." (p18) Never mind the fact that Miller's simulated conditions are a far cry from primitive conditions (see the discussion, pp67-68). Miller wasn't even the first to do these experiments: See Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and The Origin of Life, page 125ff; Miller's was a repeat of "experiments of Walther Löb et al in 1922."

Incidentally, I would think that the composition of the early earth environment would naturally come from a study of planet formation by accretion - a natural topic of astrophysics. I think the answer is: NOT an ammonia/methane environment!! for reasons that have to do with the chemistry that results from the cooling of a molten inner planet. One of my favorite books on this subject is Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. See also Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada, The Spark Of Life: Darwin And The Primeval Soup and Wallace S. Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet.

I assume that this book is a compilation of papers that he uses in his college courses. Nothing wrong with that, but I had anticipated something much better. I have great respect for his work in Cradle of Life, and his participation in the 1998 NRC Symposium, Size Limits of Very Small Microorganisms: Proceedings of a Workshop (Compass Series (Washington, D.C.).). I had hoped for some further insights that follow on from the implications of that symposium, in particular.

The most interesting chapter concerns the "Tree of Life" written by Dr. Schopf himself. Genetic research has constructed its own tree based on the recurrence of similar gene packages. Widely different animal species share the same "hox" gene packages for appendages (legs, antennae, etc.), eyes, etc. Some packages appear to have been in place and largely unchanged since (at least) the Cambrian Era, some 500 million years ago. Barely noted in his book is the ultimate "package" that is essentially the same for all plants and animals: the so-called "central dogma" that determines the genetic coding in the DNA, and the elaborate process by which this is transformed into the useful life chemicals.

If one insists on evolution by purely natural processes, this recurrence of similar gene packages is a powerful "proof" that these diverse species share a common ancestor, and in particular that all of life evolved from an original first living cell "[s]ince any complete biochemical system is far too elaborate to have evolved more than once in the history of life...." (p.163). This is of course no explanation of how the packages came to be in the first place -- and the book's probes into this issue (which is after all the subject of the entire book) come to singularly weak and unconvincing conclusions.

There will always, I think, be a chasm between Creationists and Naturalists, regarding life's origins. The Creationist sees natural descent as a possible but not necessary conclusion of the genetic tree of life: similar gene packages may just show that the Creator re-used them. Proof of a natural process is not just asserting "it must be so" but in showing such relatedness in the laboratory or in mathematical simulation based on demonstrable assumptions about physical or chemical processes. Otherwise, the claim is metaphysics or religion, but certainly not science.

In my view, the theory of evolution has made great advances exactly in proportion to the effort it has given to such experimentation. I love to discover (with the help of great authors) new things about the power of natural processes through laboratory experimentation, for example in Sean B. Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo - a book that I recommend highly. I would similarly look forward to a demonstration of relatedness by simulation (at one time I conjectured that evolution of the trilobite phacops eye can be explained by simulation on the basis of a combination of arrested development and environmental pressure).

I look forward to another book by Schopf that will similarly expand my understanding of Life's Origins -- but without the tired "just so" stories found in this book.

HMSChallenger

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My favorite part: RNA World, January 20, 2009

By	Mehetabelle "mehetabelle" (Silicon Valley United States) - See all my reviews

The articles in this book are by scientists, well respected researchers in their fields, the real guys. They were not written by journalists, science writers... this book is a primary source.

Other reviewers have described the immense scope of this book from the lifecycle of stars to, finally, biochemistry.

I want to focus on the article by Leslie Orgel, "The Origin of Biological Information" (Chapter 5). RNA is critically important for ribosomes which are the builders of proteins. Proteins are the central theme of biochemistry. The phrase "RNA World" is found in several parts of the book, but Orgel's article explains why that concept is, to me, the central answer to the origin of life, the interface between inorganic and organic.

Vastly simplified, RNA is able to catalyze replication, on its own. It offers a 'solution' to the 'paradox' of replication first or metabolism first. It is the foundation for the incredibly hopeful, fabulously rich and fascinating research on ribozymes.

In addition to reading this book, I strongly suggest readers watch the 90-minute Science Channel program (Science Channel Specials) that covers roughly the same material with narration and commentary by many of the same authors and some others. William Schopf is prominently featured; maybe this book was the basis for the TV program? The video presentation makes some of the concepts easier to grasp (and more simplified) and is more entertaining.

For those who want to know more but find the copious scientific references too dense or out of reach due to subscription fees for research journals, I suggest you read
- the article in Wikipedia about ribozymes
- the Nobel lectures (nobelprize.org) by Cech and Altman
- Lynn Margulis' book "Early Life." Several hypotheses are equivocal, such as symbiosis for the intra-cellular organelles mitochondria and the role of cyanobacteria, but that's what makes it interesting.