Life's Solution
Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

A controversial challenge to current views of evolution, for the general reader.

Simon Conway Morris (Author)

9780521603256, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 8 November 2004

488 pages, 50 b/w illus.
22.6 x 15 x 2.8 cm, 0.68 kg

'… he brings an awkward problem into the light with a masterly argument for the inevitable existence of humans … read twice.' New Scientist

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.

The Cambridge Sandwich
1. Looking for Easter Island
2. Can we break the great code?
3. Universal Goo: life as a cosmic principle?
4. The origin of life: straining the soup or our credulity?
5. Uniquely lucky? The strangeness of Earth
6. Converging on the extreme
7. Seeing convergence
8. Alien convergences?
9. The non-prevalence of humanoids?
10. Evolution bound: the ubiquity of convergence
11. Towards a theology of evolution
12. Last word.

Subject Areas: Palaeontology [RBX], Popular science [PDZ], Philosophy of science [PDA]