Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

by Simon Conway Morris

• ISBN13: 9780521603256
• ISBN10: 0521603250
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The assassin's bullet misses, the Archduke's carriage moves forward, and a catastrophic war is avoided. So too with the history of life. Re-run the tape of life, as Stephen J. Gould claimed, and the outcome must be entirely different: an alien world, without humans and maybe not even intelligence. The history of life is littered with accidents: any twist or turn may lead to a completely different world. Now this view is being challenged. Simon Conway Morris explores the evidence demonstrating life's almost eerie ability to navigate to a single solution, repeatedly. Eyes, brains, tools, even culture: all are very much on the cards. So if these are all evolutionary inevitabilities, where are our counterparts across the galaxy? The tape of life can only run on a suitable planet, and it seems that such Earth-like planets may be much rarer than hoped. Inevitable humans, yes, but in a lonely Universe.

Table of Contents

The Cambridge Sandwich

1. Looking for Easter Island

2. Can we break the great code?

3. Universal Goo: life as a cosmic principle?

4. The origin of life: straining the soup or our credulity?

5. Uniquely lucky? The strangeness of Earth

6. Converging on the extreme

7. Seeing convergence

8. Alien convergences?

9. The non-prevalence of humanoids?

10. Evolution bound: the ubiquity of convergence

11. Towards a theology of evolution

12. Last word.