Fitness of the Cosmos for Life

by Barrow, John D.; Morris, Simon Conway; Freeland, Stephen J.; Harper, Charles L., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9781107406551
• ISBN10: 1107406552
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-08-16
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

This highly interdisciplinary 2008 book highlights many of the ways in which chemistry plays a crucial role in making life an evolutionary possibility in the universe. Cosmologists and particle physicists have often explored how the observed laws and constants of nature lie within a narrow range that allows complexity and life to evolve and adapt. Here, these anthropic considerations are diversified in a host of new ways to identify the most sensitive features of biochemistry and astrobiology. Celebrating the classic 1913 work of Lawrence J. Henderson, The Fitness of the Environment for Life, this book looks at the delicate balance between chemistry and the ambient conditions in the universe that permit complex chemical networks and structures to exist. It will appeal to a broad range of scientists, academics, and others interested in the origin and existence of life in our universe.

Table of Contents

Foreword: The improbability of life

The Fitness of 'Fitness' - Henderson in Context

Locating 'fitness' and Lawrence J. Henderson

Revisiting The Fitness of the Environment

Is fine-tuning remarkable?

Complexity in context: the metaphysical implications of evolutionary theory

Tuning fine-tuning

The Fitness of the Cosmic Environment

Fitness and the cosmic environment

The interconnections between cosmology and life

Chemistry and sensitivity

Fitness of the cosmos for the origin and evolution of life: from biochemical fine-tuning to the Anthropic Principle

The Fitness of the Terrestrial Environment

How biofriendly is the universe?

Tuning into the frequencies of life: a roar of static or a precise signal?

Life on earth: the role of proteins

Protein-based life as an emergent property of matter: the nature and biological fitness of the protein folds

Could an intelligent alien predict earth's biochemistry?

Would Venus evolve on Mars? Bioenergetic constraints, allometric trends, and the evolution of life-history invariants

The Fitness of the Chemical Environment

Creating a perspective for comparing

Fine-tuning and interstellar chemistry

Framing the question of fine-tuning for intermediary metabolism

Coarse-tuning the origin of life?

Plausible lipid-like peptides: prebiotic molecular self-assembly in water

Evolution revisited by inorganic chemists

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.