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This is a book about the origin of life. Paul Davies is a physicist but his interests are wide and one of those interests happens to be the question of life's beginning.
Dr. Davies begins by noting that the probability of the self-assembly, by sheer random accident, of even the most primitive life found on Earth today (what biologists now call Archaea) is vanishingly small. So how did life begin? He explores the possibility of life originating on other worlds and being carried to Earth in meteorites. He notes that Mars was probably much more Earth-like some billions of years ago, and we also know that Martian rocks have fallen to Earth. Some of those rocks even have fossil like structures within them, but that they are actually fossils is debatable. He also looks into speculation that there may be other mechanisms by which life might physically distribute itself about the galaxy, a hypothesis called 'Panspermia'. But while these possibilities remain open questions Davies notes that they don't answer the fundamental question. Even if life came from somewhere else, how did the original life get going?
So he next explores the possibility of some "life friendly" forces being built into physics. That is, what look (to us) like purely contingent (random) events throughout the history of the universe are, by some as yet undetected mechanism, not entirely random, but are rather pushed toward life assembly whereever physical conditions (presumably contingent) condusive to it appear in the universe. He leaves this possibility open while admitting that nothing in physics or cosmology today suggests that this sort of pressure, distorting contingency towards life, has ever been found in physics. Besides, such a notion entails some teleology (purpose) in physical mechanisms, something strongly resisted (right or wrong) by today's scientists.
He ends his review with a middle-of-the-road possibility. First that chaotic physical systems, quantum phenomena, or both together might have intrinsic properties that raise the likelihood of life's self assembly. Second, that the first self-assembled life might have been considerably simpler than even the primitive Archaea on Earth today. The upshot, in combination, might have resulted in the self-assembly of such ultra-primitive life that the vanishingly small probably of self-assembly becomes a little less improbable.
What is left out of the account is what such ultra-primitive life might look like? Neither biology or philosophy has determined how simple something can be and yet be alive and therefore subject to Darwinian selection. Although I understand this it leaves the author's speculation at just that. Both the nature of such ultra-primitive life or the likelihood of its self-assembly are assessable.
So we are left there, a nice review of the possibilities, but little purchase on evaluating them.
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (March 4, 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684837994
- ISBN-13: 978-0684837994
- Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1 x 10 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
- Average Customer Review: 44 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#786,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4310 in History & Philosophy of Science
- #5032 in Evolution (Books)
- #5600 in Biology & Life Sciences
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