Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning Review

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Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning ReviewDe Duve exhibits an extraordinary skill in conveying his deep knowledge of biology. He again demonstrates that he is both a first-rate scholar and an accomplished popularizer of science. His style does not overshadow the book's content; de Duve moves with equal familiarity and elegance from scientific papers to French poets, never losing his grip on a deterministic description of the history of life. A straightforward story line starts with the origin of life and continues through the evolution of humans, mind, and language. Intertwined with the narrative are the author's thoughts on the willful world of biotechnology and our potential for determining our future as a species. It is not surprising that de Duve's biography of the biosphere includes sweeping generalizations, but his gripping chronicle could have been aided by diagrams and additional illustrations. The author's treatment of issues such as language, consciousness, and the development of pluricellularity may be unsatisfactory to some. And readers interested in the origin and earliest evolution of life would probably prefer more detailed discussions of the RNA world and what may have preceded it.
However, evolutionary convergence shows that the history of life is not as contingent as some critics of de Duve's positions would argue. Quite surprisingly, the author does not discuss any cases of molecular convergence in Life Evolving. The small, but very revealing, list of known examples includes the independent development of biosynthetic pathways for molecules such as lysine or the imizadole moiety found in purines and histidine as well as the polyphyletic origin of several nonhomologous classes of nucleic acid polymerases. With only one example of biology (Earth's own) we cannot calculate probabilities, but the search for extraterrestrial life may assist us in evaluating the evolutionary odds of life and consciousness. The idea that life on Earth is the result of a miracle or of a rare chance event has been replaced by an evolutionary narrative. Still, as William Blake wrote in There Is No Natural Religion, "Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more." The discovery of dozens of planets orbiting nearby stars and the prospect of searching for compounds of possible biological origin in their atmospheres suggest that in the not-so-distant future we may have more factors to consider when addressing the issues de Duve raises.
Whether or not one agrees with de Duve's strong statements, Life Evolving forces the reader to avoid intellectual complacency and to articulate one's own arguments to effectively address his position. These are, in themselves, major reasons to appreciate the book.Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning Overview

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