The Informational Origins of Life

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Most of the times, one reads to make sure that what is read was not worth reading. But every now and then, in the forest of books and papers through which we are forced to navigate, there is a beautiful specimen, a special product of human intelligence, which makes you write a blog to tell other people to come quickly to that spot, because there is something interesting and, yes, truly worth reading, something that should be among the books that are worth saving.

Today, the book I'd like to suggest to you is The Origins of Life - From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language by John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary (orig. 1999). It is a little book (the 2006 edition is a paperback, pocket format, of 192 pages) for the biologically-interested reader (and yes, educated, but who isn't these days?), obtained by synthesizing and substantially cutting down their previous classic The Major Transitions in Evolution.

The idea behind the book is simple and elegant. Life evolved on earth through major transitions, interpretable as dramatic breakthroughs in the way that information was passed between generations: the first appearance of life, the evolution of cells with nuclei, the sexual reproduction, the appearance of multicellular plants and animals, the emergence of cooperative animal societies, and the birth of language. Information from the beginning to the end played a pivotal role.

Here are a couple of well-written reviews:

review # 1
review # 2

Comments

  1. AnonymousThu Aug 24, 12:45:00 pm

    "Most of the times, one reads to make sure that what is read was not worth reading". Wow! That's in fact exactly what happens with academic writings of one's own discpline.

    I'm not so sure, though, that it's the same with disciplines other than one's own, for example with science for a philosopher, or philosophy for a scientist.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousThu Aug 24, 01:26:00 pm

    I liked Smith's book "Animal Signals". If I am not mistaken it was his last published book which came into the world in 2003.Thanks for bringing to my knowledge his another creation, will read without a doubt.

    ReplyDelete

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