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Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth
Describes theories, beliefs, and myths concerning the origin of life, discusses the principle features of cellular life, and looks at evolution and its fossil evidence
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 15, 2016
This is a 30+ year old book now, but when I read it ten years ago, it was the first cogent and accessible inquest into the origins of life on Earth I'd ever read and helped me clear up a few things. The clearing up of these things led me to a whole new perception of this question and more proper understanding of what science is, its limitations and its ideally apolitical nature.
Among the points the author makes (and makes well):
•the difference between the study of evolution and the question of the origin of life (hint: they're not the same and needn't have much to do with each other).
•the number of competing theories regarding the origins of life and the shortcomings of each.
•the increasingly religious bent the concept of 'science' holds for many people today and the cultural and political consequences of that erroneous conception.
•the fact that in a world where not only truth matters but the unadulterated discussion of truth, saying 'I (we) don't know' is not a sign of failure but a necessary precondition to advancing our understanding.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in biology, creationism vs. evolution in schools and society, the study of the scientific method and the nature of the human mind and how it affects our relation to and interpretation of the natural world.
Maybe there's a newer edition, but if not this is still an incredibly enlightening read.
Among the points the author makes (and makes well):
•the difference between the study of evolution and the question of the origin of life (hint: they're not the same and needn't have much to do with each other).
•the number of competing theories regarding the origins of life and the shortcomings of each.
•the increasingly religious bent the concept of 'science' holds for many people today and the cultural and political consequences of that erroneous conception.
•the fact that in a world where not only truth matters but the unadulterated discussion of truth, saying 'I (we) don't know' is not a sign of failure but a necessary precondition to advancing our understanding.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in biology, creationism vs. evolution in schools and society, the study of the scientific method and the nature of the human mind and how it affects our relation to and interpretation of the natural world.
Maybe there's a newer edition, but if not this is still an incredibly enlightening read.
October 25, 2015
As published on my blog, Victoria's Reading Alcove
Science: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation. (Merriam Webster)
Seems simple enough. The field of science is something that we know and learn through watching and testing. Predicting things that should happen and then running experiments to see if that is, indeed, what happens. This is why, even though science has its own battles with dogma and conflicting theories, there comes a time when it self-corrects. When the data and the predictability come together and we have what we can call knowledge.
And I love to watch that process. Some of my heroes are physicists, well, maybe a lot of them. People like Michio Kaku, Sean Carrol, Brian Greene, Steven Hawking and so many others that look at the universe as a great big romper room waiting to be discovered. Some evidence hints of faith, some shake their heads with a shrug and a whatever. But they all pursue truth as best they can wherever it leads them. And they don’t get in a twist when questioned. They operate in a field where everything they know may be turned on its head with the next discovery so they research and build and test with whatever tools they have. I have longed for the same kind of dialog in the biological sciences.
One of the reasons I chose this book was because I wanted to know just where we were in the field of evolutionary biology. The book is dated. Copyrighted in 1986 it lacks the progress made for nearly 30 years and that is a lot of time in science. There are many lines of inquiry presented in the book that I would (and probably will) follow up on in order to see what progress we have made. For instance, in 2009 John Sutherland and his team at the University of Manchester were able to synthesize the basic ingredients of RNA. Whether or not the process followed could occur naturally is still, of course, being researched.
The point is that there are as many unsolved issues in the field of evolutionary biology as there are in physics. Maybe more. Who’s to know? The frustrating thing is that questions about this science are often met with derision and comments about myths vs. science. But that isn’t the reason I’m asking.
I liked this book because Shapiro walks through the science of where we have been and where we were as of that time and why some of the things appeared to work and some were, well, just not getting us there. Just to be clear, we do know a great deal about how lifeforms change and modify based on the environment and the needs of everything from climate to culture. We can show how some things evolve and we are deep into research about the story our DNA tells about the past. No, we don’t have all the answers and that’s the point, isn’t it? Science is science when the same, predictable result can be duplicated by someone else with consistency. Self-correcting.
Shapiro steps through the history of our search for that spark that started non-organic chemicals down the path to life. Yes, he discusses the history of conflicts between Creationism and Science on the issue but he does not do it in a manner to disparage faith. He only wants to present what makes science and what is required to test a theory. He was, actually, not all that sold on the ruling paradigm at the time the book was written, leaning more in the direction of a minority opinion on what started the engine. It certainly was interesting reading a text that was looking forward to some of the advances we have made in the past 30 years by visiting Mars with the rovers, as well as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn with our probes.
Is it important that we one day find the scientific roots of our creation? I actually do believe so. Ever since man could think he has sought knowledge about the whys and hows of his existence. He has wondered about his place in the universe from both an egocentric and an insignificant-mite point of view. We are creatures, creations, of reason. Capable of looking out at the place we find ourselves and wondering. There must be a reason, from somewhere or someone, we became so. If you are a believer, in something or someone? Most of the ancient scriptures I have seen admonish the faithful to seek knowledge, to learn, to observe the place in which we find ourselves and to grow in wisdom.
Check out Mr. Shapiro. He is not afraid to challenge the science of the day or to ask questions about what we know and why. He may help you put some of those pieces in place.
Science: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation. (Merriam Webster)
Seems simple enough. The field of science is something that we know and learn through watching and testing. Predicting things that should happen and then running experiments to see if that is, indeed, what happens. This is why, even though science has its own battles with dogma and conflicting theories, there comes a time when it self-corrects. When the data and the predictability come together and we have what we can call knowledge.
And I love to watch that process. Some of my heroes are physicists, well, maybe a lot of them. People like Michio Kaku, Sean Carrol, Brian Greene, Steven Hawking and so many others that look at the universe as a great big romper room waiting to be discovered. Some evidence hints of faith, some shake their heads with a shrug and a whatever. But they all pursue truth as best they can wherever it leads them. And they don’t get in a twist when questioned. They operate in a field where everything they know may be turned on its head with the next discovery so they research and build and test with whatever tools they have. I have longed for the same kind of dialog in the biological sciences.
One of the reasons I chose this book was because I wanted to know just where we were in the field of evolutionary biology. The book is dated. Copyrighted in 1986 it lacks the progress made for nearly 30 years and that is a lot of time in science. There are many lines of inquiry presented in the book that I would (and probably will) follow up on in order to see what progress we have made. For instance, in 2009 John Sutherland and his team at the University of Manchester were able to synthesize the basic ingredients of RNA. Whether or not the process followed could occur naturally is still, of course, being researched.
The point is that there are as many unsolved issues in the field of evolutionary biology as there are in physics. Maybe more. Who’s to know? The frustrating thing is that questions about this science are often met with derision and comments about myths vs. science. But that isn’t the reason I’m asking.
I liked this book because Shapiro walks through the science of where we have been and where we were as of that time and why some of the things appeared to work and some were, well, just not getting us there. Just to be clear, we do know a great deal about how lifeforms change and modify based on the environment and the needs of everything from climate to culture. We can show how some things evolve and we are deep into research about the story our DNA tells about the past. No, we don’t have all the answers and that’s the point, isn’t it? Science is science when the same, predictable result can be duplicated by someone else with consistency. Self-correcting.
Shapiro steps through the history of our search for that spark that started non-organic chemicals down the path to life. Yes, he discusses the history of conflicts between Creationism and Science on the issue but he does not do it in a manner to disparage faith. He only wants to present what makes science and what is required to test a theory. He was, actually, not all that sold on the ruling paradigm at the time the book was written, leaning more in the direction of a minority opinion on what started the engine. It certainly was interesting reading a text that was looking forward to some of the advances we have made in the past 30 years by visiting Mars with the rovers, as well as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn with our probes.
Is it important that we one day find the scientific roots of our creation? I actually do believe so. Ever since man could think he has sought knowledge about the whys and hows of his existence. He has wondered about his place in the universe from both an egocentric and an insignificant-mite point of view. We are creatures, creations, of reason. Capable of looking out at the place we find ourselves and wondering. There must be a reason, from somewhere or someone, we became so. If you are a believer, in something or someone? Most of the ancient scriptures I have seen admonish the faithful to seek knowledge, to learn, to observe the place in which we find ourselves and to grow in wisdom.
Check out Mr. Shapiro. He is not afraid to challenge the science of the day or to ask questions about what we know and why. He may help you put some of those pieces in place.
November 23, 2009
Shapiro addresses the question of the origin of life on Earth from a scientific perspective. It is worth noting that Darwin was concerned with the origin of particular species, not with the origin of life itself, about which he had little to say. Shapiro presents a good explanation of the so-called "primordial soup" theory. He is especially interested in the possibility that clay deposits allowed long polymer chains of carbon atoms to form which led to the first organic molecules.
May 24, 2012
Shapiro presents the Skeptic's views and objections to all the theories of the origin of life. Most importantly, he presents the case against the replicator-first hypothesis, which is still the one most represented in biochemistry textbooks. He also talks a lot about philosophy and nature of science.
August 1, 2013
A great popular account of the origin of life debate. Not easy without some prior exposure to chemistry and biology but coherent and comprehensive. I have no idea why anyone would rate it low unless they were a creationist or an idiot (that's being redundant...).
July 24, 2014
It was quite a while ago that I read this book. Without getting involved in the whole Creation vs Evolution thing, I found this a very readable and honest book on the subject of evolution. Worth reading.
January 10, 2021
I admit to getting lost a few times in some of the more convoluted technical sections.
Shapiro does drone well Science and Mythology and how each may have there place but should not be mixed together to draw conclusions
Shapiro does drone well Science and Mythology and how each may have there place but should not be mixed together to draw conclusions
January 11, 2015
An interesting book, requires a basic understanding of Science, otherwise you will struggle understanding the Biological, Chemical & Mathematical concepts it explores
October 16, 2023
“Spontaneous generation” is the idea that life can come from something nonliving, that, for instance, mineral can birth vegetable or animal (if “birth” is the right word.) Experiments were conducted throughout history to prove the veracity of this theory, including sealing off food in jars or under cheesecloth so that nothing could get in or out. If flies still appeared after taking these precautions (the thinking went) then rotten food itself must give birth to flies.
It's easy to laugh at this reasoning, and the poor conditions under which these proto-experiments were conducted. It’s important to remember, however, that a lot of these tests took place before the scientific method was even developed. Not only that, but everything from Platonism to Christianity held that spontaneous generation was a sine qua non for the universe’s very existence. Arguing with the theory was tantamount in most natural science circles to arguing against gravity or heliocentrism in this age.
Here's another good reason not to laugh at the spontaneous generation crowd: they may actually be right. For think of it: if life exists (and let’s agree for the sake of this review that it does), then it must have come from somewhere. Unless one accepts a “solid state” universe, in which life always existed, it had actually had to come from somewhere. The inorganic, the mineral, sludge or clay, somehow acted as a scaffold on which life—whether by accident or design—eventually emerged.
It's to this subject that Origins dedicates its some three-hundred pages. It considers first the creation myths of ancient humans, and then the early experimental days in which “animalcules” were observed beneath microscopes. It goes on to the 20th century experiments involving theories about “prebiotic soup” and a “primordial stew.” How did the roiling seas (or thermal vents) go from hosting chemical reactions to those chemicals somehow being harnessed in self-replicating machines—RNA-based or DNA-based?
It's here that things get nebulous (sometimes literally, if we’re talking about life perhaps being created in an interstellar medium, involving stardust.) This prebiotic soup was supposedly struck by lightning, tinged with ammonia, roiled and bubbled until...something happened. It’s incredibly frustrating on the one hand trying to fill in the blanks, but it’s equally edifying and exciting trying to track this infinite regress back to the beginning. The old “chicken and egg” debate exists not only among scientists at symposia, but guys shooting the breeze at the bar. Humans, even the seemingly incurious, get very curious about this specific subject, their passions aroused even if only to suppress further inquiry on it.
Ultimately, at some fundamental level, the scientific and mythological both share this common wellspring. It’s only when one encroaches on the domain of the other—the creationism of a Williams Jennings Bryan, the scientism of Richard Dawkins—that a disjunction seems to occur. Thankfully Robert Shapiro is evenhanded enough to recognize the two as distinct, albeit in many ways complimentary domains. When he doesn’t know something, he has no trouble saying so.
It should also go without saying that a lot of the scientific speculation in this work has been mooted by more recent discoveries. Exoplanetary science has come a long way in the intervening decades, for one thing. For another, the private sector has picked up a lot of the slack on space exploration—cutting costs and finding alternatives to expensive multistage rockets. The discovery of new and extremely hardy extremophiles—whose existence is speculated about by Shapiro—is also a gamechanger.
Not every heterotroph needs sunlight, or oxygen, or even what we at the time thought of as a habitable environment. Tardigrades, for instance, are tougher than old boots stored in a teakwood dresser. Something like them could have easily rode freight on a meteor or even a comet via directed or undirected panspermia. Now if we can just find out where the tardigrades came from, and after that, where their progenitor originated. And then...
You can see why this might take a while.
It's easy to laugh at this reasoning, and the poor conditions under which these proto-experiments were conducted. It’s important to remember, however, that a lot of these tests took place before the scientific method was even developed. Not only that, but everything from Platonism to Christianity held that spontaneous generation was a sine qua non for the universe’s very existence. Arguing with the theory was tantamount in most natural science circles to arguing against gravity or heliocentrism in this age.
Here's another good reason not to laugh at the spontaneous generation crowd: they may actually be right. For think of it: if life exists (and let’s agree for the sake of this review that it does), then it must have come from somewhere. Unless one accepts a “solid state” universe, in which life always existed, it had actually had to come from somewhere. The inorganic, the mineral, sludge or clay, somehow acted as a scaffold on which life—whether by accident or design—eventually emerged.
It's to this subject that Origins dedicates its some three-hundred pages. It considers first the creation myths of ancient humans, and then the early experimental days in which “animalcules” were observed beneath microscopes. It goes on to the 20th century experiments involving theories about “prebiotic soup” and a “primordial stew.” How did the roiling seas (or thermal vents) go from hosting chemical reactions to those chemicals somehow being harnessed in self-replicating machines—RNA-based or DNA-based?
It's here that things get nebulous (sometimes literally, if we’re talking about life perhaps being created in an interstellar medium, involving stardust.) This prebiotic soup was supposedly struck by lightning, tinged with ammonia, roiled and bubbled until...something happened. It’s incredibly frustrating on the one hand trying to fill in the blanks, but it’s equally edifying and exciting trying to track this infinite regress back to the beginning. The old “chicken and egg” debate exists not only among scientists at symposia, but guys shooting the breeze at the bar. Humans, even the seemingly incurious, get very curious about this specific subject, their passions aroused even if only to suppress further inquiry on it.
Ultimately, at some fundamental level, the scientific and mythological both share this common wellspring. It’s only when one encroaches on the domain of the other—the creationism of a Williams Jennings Bryan, the scientism of Richard Dawkins—that a disjunction seems to occur. Thankfully Robert Shapiro is evenhanded enough to recognize the two as distinct, albeit in many ways complimentary domains. When he doesn’t know something, he has no trouble saying so.
It should also go without saying that a lot of the scientific speculation in this work has been mooted by more recent discoveries. Exoplanetary science has come a long way in the intervening decades, for one thing. For another, the private sector has picked up a lot of the slack on space exploration—cutting costs and finding alternatives to expensive multistage rockets. The discovery of new and extremely hardy extremophiles—whose existence is speculated about by Shapiro—is also a gamechanger.
Not every heterotroph needs sunlight, or oxygen, or even what we at the time thought of as a habitable environment. Tardigrades, for instance, are tougher than old boots stored in a teakwood dresser. Something like them could have easily rode freight on a meteor or even a comet via directed or undirected panspermia. Now if we can just find out where the tardigrades came from, and after that, where their progenitor originated. And then...
You can see why this might take a while.
August 11, 2024
This book is now almost 40 years old but as far as I know it still holds up. Scientists do not have anything resembling a plausible hypothesis for how life came to be.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews