Format:
1 Online-Ressource (xxi, 464 pages)
,
digital, PDF file(s)
ISBN:
9780511535499
Content:
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
Content:
The Cambridge Sandwich -- Looking tor Easter Island -- Inherency: where is the ground plan in evolution? -- The navigation of protein hyperspace -- The game of life -- Eerie perfection -- Finding Easter Island -- Can we break the great code? -- The ground floor -- DNA: the strangest of all molecules? -- Universal goo: life as a cosmic principle? -- A Martini the size of the Pacific -- Goo from the sky -- Back to deep space -- A life-saving rain? -- The origin of life: straining the soup or our -- Credulity? -- Finding its path -- Problems with experiments -- On the flat -- Back to the test tube -- A sceptic's charter -- Uniquely lucky? The strangeness of Earth -- The shattered orb -- Battering the Earth -- The Mars express -- Making the Solar System -- Rare Moon -- Just the right size -- Jupiter and the comets -- Just the right place -- A cosmic fluke? -- Converging on the extreme -- Universal chlorophyll? -- The wheels of life? -- Fortean bladders -- A silken convergence -- Matrices and skeletons -- Play it again! -- Attacking convergence -- Convergence: on the ground, above the ground, under the ground -- Seeing convergence -- A balancing act -- Returning the gaze -- Eyes of an alien? -- Clarity and colour vision -- Universal rhodopsin -- Smelling convergence -- The echo of convergence -- Shocking convergence -- Hearing convergence -- Thinking convergence -- Alien convergences? -- Down in the farm -- Military convergence -- Convergent complexities -- Hearts and minds -- Honorary mammals -- Giving birth to convergence -- Warming to convergence, singing of convergence, chewing convergence -- The non-prevalence of humanoids? -- Interstellar nervous systems? -- The conceptualizing pancake -- The bricks and mortar of life -- Genes and networks -- Jack, the railway baboon -- Giant brains -- Grasping convergence -- Converging on the humanoid -- Converging on the ultimate -- Evolution bound: the ubiquity of convergence -- Ubiquitous convergence -- Respiratory convergence -- Freezing convergence, photosynthetic convergence -- The molecules converge -- Convergence and evolution -- Converging trends -- A possible research programme -- Towards a theology of evolution -- An evolutionary embedment -- Darwin's priesthood -- Heresy! Heresy -- Genetic fundamentalism -- A path to recovery? -- Convereine on convergence -- Last word
Note:
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780521827041
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780521603256
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9780521827041
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1017/CBO9780511535499
