- Hardcover: 96 pages
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press (23 Jan 1986)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0521309492
- ISBN-13: 978-0521309493
- Product Dimensions: 20.5 x 13.3 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,340,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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"An interesting book, clearly written and well argued, it can certainly be recommended..." Amazon.com
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This general book starts by surveying theories and experiments concerned with the origin of life; it then gives a sketch of new ideas and experiments by which the gaps in our understanding may be filled. The principal new idea is that a search for chemical models of primitive life which are highly tolerant of errors may result in the recognition of structures which do not involve exact replication of molecules. It is suggested that genes originated later, as parasites infecting an earlier non-replicating fauna. As the word origins in the title implies, the author suggests that we should look carefully at the notion that life began twice, once with cells and later with genes. The book is based on the Tarner lectures, given with the support of Trinity College, Cambridge, to a mixed university audience of educated but not expert listeners. It is therefore written for such a non-specialist reader.
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In February 1943, at a bleak moment in the history of mankind, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger gave a course of lectures to a mixed audience at Trinity College, Dublin. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In February 1943, at a bleak moment in the history of mankind, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger gave a course of lectures to a mixed audience at Trinity College, Dublin. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This review relates to the second edition of `Origins of Life' (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999).
In 'Origins of Life', Freeman Dyson argues an old theory of the double origin of life, that cells preceded enzymes, which preceded genes in the early evolution of life. Metabolizing homeostatic cellular life evolved first. It had the ability to reproduce but not to replicate. Replication followed when nucleotides (which originally were parasitic on the metabolizing cellular material) were tamed and put to use by the cells.
Freeman Dyson here combines theories from Alexander Oparin and Lynn Margulis to formulate a philosophy of biological origins that emphasises the creative role of error and disorder, in which natural selection did not get going until replication evolved, so there was a theoretical period of pre-Darwinian evolution when copying-errors were greatly tolerated and random drift was dominant.
The argument is engaging and a useful corrective in one respect to those of us who favour the selfish gene interpretation of biological evolution: Dyson argues that life began in complexity (as a web of homeostatic molecules), not in simplicity (as in replicators). 'Life by its very nature is resistant to simplification, whether on the level of single cells or ecological systems or human societies'. Thus replicators never were in full control but are always prevented from over-asserting themselves by homeostatic forces that maximise 'diversity of structure and flexibility of function'. A cellular system is much like the old Hapsburg empire: 'despotism tempered by sloppiness' (these quotations from page 89).
Dyson sums up:
'I have been trying to imagine a framework for the origin of life, guided by a personal philosophy that considers the primal characteristics of life to be homeostasis rather than replication, diversity rather than uniformity, the flexibility of the genome rather than the tyranny of the gene, the error tolerance of the whole rather than the precision of the parts' (page 90).
In 'Origins of Life', Freeman Dyson argues an old theory of the double origin of life, that cells preceded enzymes, which preceded genes in the early evolution of life. Metabolizing homeostatic cellular life evolved first. It had the ability to reproduce but not to replicate. Replication followed when nucleotides (which originally were parasitic on the metabolizing cellular material) were tamed and put to use by the cells.
Freeman Dyson here combines theories from Alexander Oparin and Lynn Margulis to formulate a philosophy of biological origins that emphasises the creative role of error and disorder, in which natural selection did not get going until replication evolved, so there was a theoretical period of pre-Darwinian evolution when copying-errors were greatly tolerated and random drift was dominant.
The argument is engaging and a useful corrective in one respect to those of us who favour the selfish gene interpretation of biological evolution: Dyson argues that life began in complexity (as a web of homeostatic molecules), not in simplicity (as in replicators). 'Life by its very nature is resistant to simplification, whether on the level of single cells or ecological systems or human societies'. Thus replicators never were in full control but are always prevented from over-asserting themselves by homeostatic forces that maximise 'diversity of structure and flexibility of function'. A cellular system is much like the old Hapsburg empire: 'despotism tempered by sloppiness' (these quotations from page 89).
Dyson sums up:
'I have been trying to imagine a framework for the origin of life, guided by a personal philosophy that considers the primal characteristics of life to be homeostasis rather than replication, diversity rather than uniformity, the flexibility of the genome rather than the tyranny of the gene, the error tolerance of the whole rather than the precision of the parts' (page 90).
Format:Paperback
Freeman Dyson's book is heavily influenced by Schrodinger's influential text 'What is Life'. Schrodingers' little book - barely 80 pages long - considered life from the perspective of a physicist and speculated about the molecular basis of life. Dyson argues that Schrodinger placed excessive emphasis on genetic inheritance and focusses attention on the development of metabolism as the key to understanding the evolution of life.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
47 of 48 people found the following review helpful
theories on the origins of life via 1985
31 Mar 1998
Format:Hardcover
First published in 1985, Origins of Life by Freeman Dyson, is a great introduction into the most accepted theories on the origins of life. It was almost universally assumed that the first organisms sustained themselves, in a very hostile world 3 eons ago, by replicating themselves. A brief introduction into the three main theories of replication, a precise chemical process a molecule uses to make an exact copy of itself, is laid out in the first two chapters. Dyson then presents his own theory as to the possibility that the first organisms didn't replicate, but sustained themselves via metabolism, in the form of simple enzymes. He theorized that replicating organisms used the pre-existing enzymes as hosts later on. In chapter three, he presents a "simple" mathematical model as a basis for biologists to create their own experiments to, if nothing else, prove him wrong (Dyson is a theoretical physicist and this work attempts to bring together thinking from different scientific fields). The last chapter was the best, bringing philosophy into play. For example, he debates the notion that replication of human behavior is not a very exact process, but very fault tolerant instead. In fact, he surmises the first replicating organisms were probably sloppy at the job. If that notion excites you, buy this book! Mr. Dyson attempts to make this book readable for the layman, but does not define what monomers or nucleotides are. This book is not for everyone. A rudimentary understanding of biology would help, but I made it with only a dictionary. I didn't even attempt to follow the math in chapter three, and the author was apologizing for its simplicity!
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful
A Short Book That Says a Lot
28 Feb 2001
Format:Paperback
In 91 pages of text Freeman Dyson says some surprising and wonderful things, and turns around some conventional notions about the place of replicating molecules such as DNA and RNA in early life. His view is that they came later - perhaps much later - after metabolism was established in cells that reproduced sloppily and approximately, but had robust-enough homeostatic mixes that a split was usually successful. This view was approximately that of a Russian named Oparin 75 years ago, but the dazzle of the genome has turned almost everyone to thinking that precise replicators had priority in the development of life over haphazard metabolizers.
Dyson does not depend on hand-waving and vague argument to draw these conclusions. He reviews what is known and the main extant theories of life's origin, then introduces his own, using a "toy model" that abstracts the chemistry and draws conclusions about steady-state solutions that might work. As befits a great theoretician, it is an elegant and powerful bit of theorizing, but does not wander from the constraints of the chemistry -- as far as he knows. But Dyson is clear that the point of his model is to stimulate experiment, and that organic chemists will be the ones to judge the usefulness and viability of his assumptions.
Unless you are a physicist, you won't follow some of his work in solving for the model, but you can trust the math and the physics when it comes from Freeman Dyson. Just glance at the equations and graphs, but follow the words in his model chapter and get a real feel for the kind of system that proto-life might have been.
He makes a good case for the essence of life being complexity, and that the conceptual purity and rigor of the gene has distracted us from the "tangled bank" that life at all levels, from bacterial cell to ecosystem to economy, seems to exemplify. Error tolerance -- being able to carry on in the midst of junk and in spite of "mistakes" -- seems to be more characteristic of life than exactness. That's a pleasing notion in an uptight age.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Good questions are real thought-provokers
13 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback
We're used to books that give answers. We want to be spoon fed, and often whine when the answers are not sugar coated as well.
The books about the origins of life that I've read (De Duve's "Vital Dust," Margulis' "Early Life," Gribbon's several books, Crick's pan-spermia, the anthropic principle...) follow the usual pattern. They start at different stages of the origins of life, but they all:
- expound a theory as if it were universally agreed to be true then
- explain how the process progressed whether from stardust or extra-terrestrial sources, oceanic amino acids or bacteria-like organisms.
Well, Freeman Dyson does it differently. He starts with good questions. Questions, when formulated well, help us to think and arrive at better answers. He asks about the first living cells:
- Did replication come first or
- Did metabolism come first?
- Did those two processes happen simultaneously?
- Did they happen independently or were they correlated or causative...?
- Which process might be 'better' or 'worse' if it happened first?
He reviews the well-known research (natural selection, statistical methods...) and how well they may be able to answer these questions. Then he tells us his preference and why. Why? Because it helps us to think further.
Then he says that being a physicist (and a mathmatician who, at age 17, devised the pattern for cluster bombing that would create a self-accelerating firestorm. His theory was tested on Dresden and proven to be very effective), he does not know about biology and with that disclaimer, built a 'toy model' to help us think through ways to arrive at conclusions.
The third part of this book goes into the 'fidelity of replication (or error rates), and an analysis of the smallest number of self-organizing molecules that still 'work.' This seeming tangent is of special interest to me because it furthers my quest to learn how we acquired mitochondria and how they work now, with so few DNA of their own. And also what might be the evolutionary future of extremely simple organisms that are formed into colonies such as some sea jellies?
This book made me think so hard that I don't actually remember its conclusions. It's a short book so only took a few evenings to read, even including the periods I had to put it down to let my mind digress down a path that was triggered by the book, but I might be thinking about it and studying the questions that it raised for a very long time.
The books about the origins of life that I've read (De Duve's "Vital Dust," Margulis' "Early Life," Gribbon's several books, Crick's pan-spermia, the anthropic principle...) follow the usual pattern. They start at different stages of the origins of life, but they all:
- expound a theory as if it were universally agreed to be true then
- explain how the process progressed whether from stardust or extra-terrestrial sources, oceanic amino acids or bacteria-like organisms.
Well, Freeman Dyson does it differently. He starts with good questions. Questions, when formulated well, help us to think and arrive at better answers. He asks about the first living cells:
- Did replication come first or
- Did metabolism come first?
- Did those two processes happen simultaneously?
- Did they happen independently or were they correlated or causative...?
- Which process might be 'better' or 'worse' if it happened first?
He reviews the well-known research (natural selection, statistical methods...) and how well they may be able to answer these questions. Then he tells us his preference and why. Why? Because it helps us to think further.
Then he says that being a physicist (and a mathmatician who, at age 17, devised the pattern for cluster bombing that would create a self-accelerating firestorm. His theory was tested on Dresden and proven to be very effective), he does not know about biology and with that disclaimer, built a 'toy model' to help us think through ways to arrive at conclusions.
The third part of this book goes into the 'fidelity of replication (or error rates), and an analysis of the smallest number of self-organizing molecules that still 'work.' This seeming tangent is of special interest to me because it furthers my quest to learn how we acquired mitochondria and how they work now, with so few DNA of their own. And also what might be the evolutionary future of extremely simple organisms that are formed into colonies such as some sea jellies?
This book made me think so hard that I don't actually remember its conclusions. It's a short book so only took a few evenings to read, even including the periods I had to put it down to let my mind digress down a path that was triggered by the book, but I might be thinking about it and studying the questions that it raised for a very long time.
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