The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language - Hardcover

Smith, John Maynard; Szathmáry, Eörs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198504934 ISBN 13: 9780198504931

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999

Synopsis

When John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary published The Major Transitions in Evolution, it was seen as a major work in biology. Nature hailed it as a book of "grand and daunting sweep.... A splendid and rewarding tour de force." And New Scientist wrote that it captured "the essence of modern biology," calling it "an extremely significant book which, as a bonus, is very readable."
Now, in The Origins of Life, Maynard Smith and Szathmary have completely rewritten Transitions to bring their ideas to a wider audience of general readers. Here is a brilliant, state-of-the-art account of how life evolved on earth, focusing primarily on six major transitions--dramatic breakthroughs in the way that information was passed between generations. The authors offer illuminating explorations of the origin of life itself, the arrival of the first cells with nuclei, the first reproduction by sexual means, the appearance of multicellular plants and animals, the emergence of cooperation and of animal societies, and the birth of language.
The Origins of Life represents the thinking of two leading scientists on questions that engage us all--how life began and how it gradually evolved from tiny invisible cells into whales and trees and human beings.

About this title

About the Author

John Maynard Smith is an internationally renowned biologiest, widely respected for the originality of his ideas and quality of his thinking. He is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex. Eors Szathmary is a Professor at the Collegium Budapest, in Hungary.

Reviews

How did life on Earth go from individual molecules in hot carbon soup to viral spirals, to cells, to sex cells, to us? Smith and Szathmary's The Major Transitions in Evolution (1995), addressed to other evolutionary biologists, responded to this question by reviewing Darwinism through the lens of information theory. The authors' new work brings nonexpert readers an "account of the evolution of complexity," of changes in the ways "genetic information... is stored, transmitted and translated." Smith and Szathmary (professors, respectively, at the University of Sussex, England, and the Collegium Budapest, Hungary) apply their model to periods in the history of life, from the era of the first self-replicating molecules to the advent of chromosomes and thence to cells and cell walls, sexual differentiation and mating, symbiosis between species, animal societies and symbolic speech. Directing their interest in information transfer to biological processes and epochs, they cover topics ranging from the definition of life (why do we not call fire "alive"?) to the basis of tribal warfare. Moving speedily from epoch to epoch, fueled by a few important concepts (such as the division of labor) and explaining all the genetics they use, Smith and Szathmary show "just how difficult it has been to evolve complex organisms whose genes co-operate rather than compete." A chapter on sex offers several theories of how it arose; a later chapter examines the origins of our built-in ways of understanding and generating grammatical sentences in our native languages. Compact, dense, formidable yet accessible, this book exposes readers to the cutting edge in theoretical evolutionary biology.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Maynard Smith and Szathmáry are intrigued by the complexity of organisms. "The more we know about them--their biochemistry, their anatomy, their behavior--the more astonishing are the detailed adaptations that we discover. How could all this complexity have arisen?" Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection cannot alone account for it; that theory predicts only that organisms will get better at surviving and reproducing in their current environment, not that they will become more complex. The answer, according to the authors, is that organisms increase in complexity as a result of "a small number of major changes in the way in which information is stored, transmitted, and translated." Maynard Smith (emeritus professor of biology at the University of Sussex) and Szathmáry (at the Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest) call these changes "the major transitions" and cite eight of them in evolutionary history, beginning with replicating molecules and ending--at least for now--with the development of human language. In explaining the transitions to a general readership, the authors provide a clear-eyed review of a large part of modern biology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198504934
• ISBN 13: 9780198504931
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 190