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The Fifth Miracle: Search for the Origins of Life (Allen Lane Science)
 
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The Fifth Miracle: Search for the Origins of Life (Allen Lane Science) (Hardcover)
by P.C.W. Davies (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  (4 customer reviews)

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Product details
  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Allen Lane (9 Mar 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0713992158
  • ISBN-13: 978-0713992151
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 885,140 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
    (Publishers and authors: Improve Your Sales)
  • Other Editions: Paperback (New Ed) |  All Editions


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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The origin of life remains one of the most attractive and yet seemingly intractable problems in science. Was it by accident or design that at least 3.5 billion years ago inorganic matter somehow became vitalized on Earth? And if it happened here, could it have happened elsewhere in the Universe? Nobel prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod concluded that life is the product of chance, that "Man at last knows he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe."

Paul Davies cogently argues otherwise in The Fifth Miracle. Originally a British physicist, Davies is now a prize-winning science writer living in Australia. Writing for a general readership, he covers all the main topics surrounding this fundamental question, from microbial biology and biochemistry, through the fossil record and genetics to Martian meteorites. Eminently readable, generally accurate and without mind-boggling detail (references are provided for intellectual explorers), Davies presents the current ideas and data in a very even-handed way. He comes down on the side of those who believe that we are not alone but live in a "self-organizing and self-complexifying universe, governed by ingenious laws that encourage matter to evolve towards life and consciousness." -- Douglas Palmer

Synopsis
Reveals the new theories and discoveries that seem set to transform our understanding of life's role in the cosmos. Davies examines the evidence suggesting that the first organisms lived deep underground and that microbes carried inside rocks have travelled between Earth and Mars.


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4 Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The mystery of life in a meteorite, 23 Mar 2000
By A Customer
Paul Davies here goes through the theories attached to the enduring problem of where life originally came from, how an inhospitable lump of rather warm rock managed to become a world of living creatures. Sometimes the science is really a bit too (unnecessarily) blinding, especially where Davies tries to relate the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy to the origins of life: the connection between physics and biology here is rather difficult to understand. But by the time Davies'...erm... less substantiated theories about meteorites and Mars start being elaborated, the book's taken on a momentum of its own. It's a very interesting book, but, to a layman, only quite convincing.
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