Life's Solution

Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

Simon Conway Morris

470 pages, parution le 31/12/2004

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Résumé

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.

Sommaire

Looking for Easter Island
Can we break the great code?
Universal Goo: life as a cosmic principle?
The origin of life: straining the soup or our credulity?
Uniquely lucky? The strangeness of Earth
Converging on the extreme
Seeing convergence
Alien convergences?
The non-prevalence of humanoids?
Evolution bound: the ubiquity of convergence
Towards a theology of evolution
Last word

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Cambridge University Press
Auteur(s)	Simon Conway Morris
Parution	31/12/2004
Nb. de pages	470
Format	15 x 23
Couverture	Broché
Poids	780g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780521603256
ISBN13	978-0-521-60325-6