Review by Choice Review
This book focuses on the congruence between physics and biology. Cockell (astrobiology, Univ. of Edinburgh) eloquently conveys his love of these topics, but as a biologist, this reviewer sees these equations--which govern the mechanics of animate and inanimate objects alike--as merely descriptive, not transformational. There is no controversy here; modern science accepts that organisms operate within the laws of physics. What is most interesting is evolution itself, but this text never quite crosses that river. The book thoroughly explores the deterministic aspects of evolution--the convergence of form. It champions the extent to which mathematical formulas determine biology, but this approach is distinctly at odds with classical evolutionary biology in which the pattern of evolutionary diversity is seen as resulting from secular, non-repeating processes. True, that world is embedded in a milieu of forces that can be quantified, but readers may be left hoping for something more than mutation, population genetics, and natural selection as the underlying evolutionary basis to "the equations of life." Still, some readers will find Cockell's approach enlightening. Those interested in exploring this debate should also read Ernst Mayr's What Makes Biology Unique? (CH, Feb'05, 42-3407). Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, and general readers. --Paul K. Strother, Boston College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
A newcomer to the cantina in the pirate city of Mos Eisley in a galaxy far away would be confronted by a crowd of intimidating thugs: Rodians, Devaronians, fthorians, Morseerians, Lutrillians, Siniteens and other alien buccaneers swilling liquor and picking fights while a band of hairless Biths play some kind of cosmic jazz. Just another night at the Star Wars bar. As exotic as they appear, these beings share a comforting familiarity: They are bilaterally symmetrical with, for the most part, a pair of eyes staring from a head connected by a neck to a torso equipped with matching pairs of limbs. They move across the floor on legs, not wheels. They make sounds with mouths and register them with ears. In their basic body plan they are little different from the motley crew in the public room of the Spouterfnn where fshmael meets Queequeg, Melville's illustrated man. Scientists have long debated how closely extraterrestrial life would evolve to resemble that on earth. Stephen Jay Gould, in his book "Wonderful Life," took a contrarian view, arguing that with a slightly different roll of the Darwinian dice, earth would have been inhabited by creatures unimaginable. Charles S. Cockell, an astrobiologist at the University of Edinburgh, is the antiGould. In his new book, "The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution," he argues for a cosmos populated, if at all, by anthropocentric creatures like those George Lucas dreamed up for the "Star Wars" films. No matter how different the conditions on distant worlds, all presumably have the same laws of physics - from quantum mechanics to thermodynamics and the laws of gravity. And life, as Cockell puts it, is simply living matter, "material capable of reproducing and evolving." If there is biology elsewhere in the universe (and it has risen beyond the level of green slime) we would find it strikingly familiar, he proposes, not only in appearance but down to the carbon-based machinery in its cells. Cockell's book lucidly addresses biology's great mystery: If we grant that life is an interplay of chance and necessity, in the words of the French biochemist Jacques Monod, then which has the upper hand? Monod came down on the side of chance, proposing that the cellular chemistry that seems so fundamental is just "randomness caught on the wing," a grab bag of molecules that happened to be around when the first cellular membranes spontaneously formed, trapping a drop of the primordial waters. Cells with the fittest concoctions crowded out the weaker, but then the recipe was locked in - a frozen accident carried along for the evolutionary ride. But Cockell argues that even at this deep level, the possibilities of life were tightly circumscribed. Rerun the tape of evolution, and DNA, RNA, ATP, the Krebs cycle - the rigmarole of Biology 101 - would probably arise again, here or in distant worlds. Single cells would then join together, seeking the advantages of metazoan life, until before you know it something like the earthly menagerie would come to be. Never dogmatic, Cockell entertains opposing views. H. G. Wells, he reminds us, envisioned "silicon-aluminum men" dwelling in an atmosphere of gaseous sulfur on the shores of a liquid iron sea. Others have imagined Plutonians resembling intelligent ice cubes. Darwin wrote of "endless forms most beautiful" (beauty being in the eye of the beholder) but Cockell makes a strong case that evolution is narrowly channeled. The endlessness is only in the filigree, like the spots on a moth or Queequeg's tattoos. In exploring the space of possible life-forms, evolution is no freer, Cockell implies, than the builder of a bridge. Consider the mole, a burrowing creature that is "an engineering solution to the compromises needed to effectively shift soil by maximizing the force applied over a small distance," Cockell writes, "ft is an organic manifestation of P=F/A." Pressure equals force divided by area. No wonder moles evolved independently in Europe (where they are kin to shrews and weasels) and in Australia (where their cousins are kangaroos and koalas). The contingencies of random variation are overshadowed by the hard reality of making a living in an unforgiving world. That in itself is not a startling idea. The pleasure of Cockell's book comes from the detail with which he pursues it. In a chapter called "The Physics of the Ladybug," he carefully lays out some of the principles that dictate why such an insect almost had to be. ft would not be so surprising to find one crawling along the leaf of a potted plant in the Star Wars bar, oblivious to the surrounding noise. GEORGE JOHNSON is a science writer whose column, Raw Data, appeared for three years in The Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* As an astrobiologist, Cockell is involved with the question of whether there is life on other planets. Unable to do personal fieldwork, he and his scientific fellows apply knowledge about life on Earth what it's made of and what it does to the findings of spectroscopy, telescopy, and other long-distance methods of research about other objects in space. That what's out there and what's here are made of the same elements indicates that the laws of physics account for what's happening there as well as here, which is evolution, and in the same manner. Life, therefore, is universal, made out of the same cluster of elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur), with water as the best medium of combination. Cockell leads up to that big message in gratifying chapters about much smaller things ants, moles, cells, molecules, and atomic particles and the physics that explains them and their biological functions. The last chapter reconsiders the role of contingency the chance occurrence that changes something in light of what the melding of physics and biology reveals about life processes and forms. Both magisterial and collegial, this may be the biology book of the year.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An insightful argument that evolution, despite producing complex creatures as different as bacteria, bugs, and humans, must obey scientific laws."Physics explains much about why living things look like they do; evolutionary biology provides much of the explanation about how they become like they are." So writes Cockell (Astrobiology/Univ. of Edinburgh; Astrobiology: Understanding Life in the Universe, 2015), the director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology, in his latest, and he proceeds to make a convincing case. Laws set limits. There is life at temperatures above that of boiling water and below freezing, but not by much. When water is absent or locked up in extremely salty environments, life cannot exist. Honey doesn't spoil not because it contains any toxins but because its water is unavailable. Our planet's life is carbon-based and requires a universal solvent, water. Might creatures elsewhere in the universe form themselves from closely related silicon and prefer other common liquids such as ammonia or methane? Moving smoothly from physics to chemistry, biology, and beyond, the author is an amiable guide through some knotty scientific thickets. Ignoring the taboo on equations in popular science writing, Cockell sprinkles them liberally to illustrate their (relative) simplicity. Perhaps the simplest, P = F/A (pressure equals force over area), is critical to the mole, a burrowing animal designed to shift soil by maximizing the force over a small area. Evolution eliminates less efficient burrowers, so all moles, many entirely unrelated, look alike. "If physics and biology are tightly coupled," writes Cockell, "then life outside Earth, if such life exists, might be remarkably similar to life on Earth, and terrestrial life might be less an idiosyncrasy of one experiment in evolution, but a template for much of life in the universe."Many readers will find the equations incomprehensible, but they will relish a lucid, provocative argument that the dazzling variety of organisms produced by 4 billion years of evolution may seem unbounded, but all follow universal laws. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
