Reddit reviews Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

How much of a background do you have in biology, chemistry and biochemistry? Not trying to dodge the (excellent) question or to belittle you in any way. But an appropriate answer will change considerably depending on what we can assume you already know.


Nick Lane's book Life Ascending has a great chapter on abiogenesis. But it is written in a style that seems to me would be quite dry if you didn't have a solid background in the material already. Essentially, there are several plausible, overlapping theories that probably contain the answer among them. Many of them have excellent foundations in experimental research.


We may never know exactly what combination of specific events led to the first systems we would call "living". But we can show that it is entirely plausible that they did so through natural processes with no supernatural agency whatsoever required. We have generated self-replicating and evolving systems of RNA molecules in the lab. (Im on my phone right now and can't link easily, but will later if you're interested). This, in itself, isn't life and the systems were generated by an outside agency (the scientists). But the building blocks are readily generated spontaneously and the timescales involved (thousands of millions of years) change the equations of what is likely to occur naturally.


Finally, I'd like to point out that even if we had no idea about the answer to such a question (which we certainly do) this would still make the leap to a supernatural agency untenable. An argument (for the existence of any gods) from ignorance (about how the world works) is still a logical fallacy.

All the best.

Kaufmann is fairly well respected in the community of complexity researchers, but his work is veeery abstract. You might find the stuff you read there interesting, but I doubt you'll find anything to sway someone skeptical of the plausibility of non-God-initiated abiogenesis that their skepticism is mainly based on bias.

With that goal in mind, I'm not sure that pursuing the math angle directly is really the best route either (if there actually are any best routes towards that sort of goal). The appeal to mere mathematical plausibility is abstract enough that it's for a person to dismiss that and still maintain that it isn't plausible physically. It would maybe be better instead or in addition to approach the topic of known environmental contexts that make abiogenesis seem like a physically plausible thing to have happened.

From that perspective, I'd say the first couple chapters of Lane's Life Ascending is still one of the better sources out there. It's a very approachable text.

This book is pretty awesome. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0393338665

Explains everything from how life started to why (most!) animals must die of old age (and everything in between)

I have a copy I can mail you if can't get hold of it.

Interesting. No doubt you're right that some mammals have awful stamina and some reptiles have good stamina, but couldn't it still be true that mammals have greater stamina in general? My original comment was based off this passage in Nick Lane's book Life Ascending (page 210)

> What exactly is it that we have but the reptiles don’t? It had better be good.  

> The single most compelling answer is ‘stamina’. Lizards can match mammals easily for speed or muscle power, and indeed over short distances outpace them; but they exhaust very quickly. Grab at a lizard and it will disappear in a flash, streaking to the nearest cover as fast as the eyes can see. But then it rests, often for hours, recuperating painfully slowly from the exertion. The problem is that reptiles ain’t built for comfort–they’re built for speed. As in the case of human sprinters, they rely on anaerobic respiration, which is to say, they don’t bother to breathe, but can’t keep it up for long. They generate energy (as ATP) extremely fast, but using processes that soon clog them up with lactic acid, crippling them with cramps.

Ernst Mayer, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins have written some decent books broadly covering the evidence for evolution. Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters fits into that general category, and does a good job of outlining the evidence for evolution as well, in particular from a paleontological perspective.




Astrobiologist / Paleontologist Peter Ward has written a ton of fantastic books. I'd start with Rare Earth, which outlines the Rare Earth hypothesis, ie complex life is likely rare in the universe. If you read Rare Earth, you'll come away with a better understanding of the abiotic factors which influence the evolution of life on Earth. If you end up enjoying Rare Earth, I'd highly recommend Ward's other books.




Terra, by paleontologist Michael Novacek describes the evolution of the modern biosphere, in particular from the Cretaceous onwards, and then discusses environmental change on a geological scale to modern environmental challenges facing humanity. It's one of those books which will change the way you think about the modern biosphere, and the evolution in the context ecosystems, as opposed to individual species.




Another book by a paleontologist is When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, looking at the Permian mass extinction, which was the most catastrophic mass extinction of the Phanerozoic wiping out 95%+ of all species. More focused on the geology than the other books I mentioned, so if you're not into geology you probably wont enjoy it so much.



Biochemist Nick Lane has written some great books. Life ascending would be a good one to start off with. Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life is really excellent as well.




The Origins of Life and the Universe is written by molecular biologist Paul Lurquin. It mostly focuses on the origin of life. It's pretty accessible for what it covers.




Another couple of books I would recommend to people looking for something more advanced are: Michael Lynch's Origins of Genome Architecture, which covers similar stuff to much of his research, although takes a much broader perspective. Genes in conflict is a pretty comprehensive treatment of selfish genetic elements. Fascinating read, although probably a bit heavy for most laypeople.

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane