Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "realism"
Recommending "Life As We Do Not Know It" and "Rare Earth"
I just found Peter Ward’s second book Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search For (and Synthesis of) Alien Life, New York and around the world, Penguin Group, 2005. In this book Ward considers life itself—what it is, where in the universe it might be, and however it might be re-invented here soon.
After I finish reading it, I might review Life... in more depth, but for now I‘m recommending it and its prequel Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, New York, Springer-Verlag, 2000. Both books give us an in-depth, open arguments that make a lot of sense to me.
1) The authors’ Rare Earth Hypothesis is based on credible astronomical and biochemical possibilities, suggesting that microbial life is easy “...to evolve from non life...and...should be found widely throughout habitable planets and moons in the cosmos, while complex animals and plants are very rare. Not only are they relatively fragile, requiring “narrow environmental conditions to survive,” they need long-term stability in habitable conditions in order to evolve.
Rare Earth was disliked by SETI and science fiction fans, who ignored the book’s emphasis on the observation that “...simple life should be common.” Ward and Brownlee argued that a long period of habitability required for the evolution of complex, large, oxygen-powered animals was made difficult by a long list of astronomical accidents and “...new information from oceanography, geology and paleontology” that has created the new science called astrobiology.
I’m looking forward to finishing Life As We Do No Know It because Peter Ward is a realist. He readily explores all the options he can muster. In Rare Earth he and Brownlee note that the huge numbers of stars and “their inevitable planets” make the existence of the “intelligent civilizations [in the universe] a near inevitability.” However, the huge distances and time considerations make any contact, even detection, between such civilizations highly unlikely. I believe Carl Sagan did us no favors with his optimism, though the continued SETI search is certainly worth doing, IF we can afford the resources it requires. A big IF as we consider our limits.
As a realist, Ward begins Life... by observing that the universe is so large and diverse, it is “...reasonable to suppose that all manners of life are possible,” but it is also possible that there “...might not be anything except carbon based life-forms, [and] DNA might not be ...just one way but the only way.” We are a sample of one, but we’ve learned enough about physics, astronomy and biochemistry in the last few decades to be realistic about both diverse universality and down-to-Earth chemical probabilities.
I look forward to finishing Ward’s consideration of what life is, here, there and soon to be reinvented. In many labs around the world, scientists are using a variety of approaches to recreate life—everything from re-inventing from scratch to imitating how selection working with self-organizing properties of matter (Some call it the hand of God.) precipitated life on Earth.
Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe
After I finish reading it, I might review Life... in more depth, but for now I‘m recommending it and its prequel Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, New York, Springer-Verlag, 2000. Both books give us an in-depth, open arguments that make a lot of sense to me.
1) The authors’ Rare Earth Hypothesis is based on credible astronomical and biochemical possibilities, suggesting that microbial life is easy “...to evolve from non life...and...should be found widely throughout habitable planets and moons in the cosmos, while complex animals and plants are very rare. Not only are they relatively fragile, requiring “narrow environmental conditions to survive,” they need long-term stability in habitable conditions in order to evolve.
Rare Earth was disliked by SETI and science fiction fans, who ignored the book’s emphasis on the observation that “...simple life should be common.” Ward and Brownlee argued that a long period of habitability required for the evolution of complex, large, oxygen-powered animals was made difficult by a long list of astronomical accidents and “...new information from oceanography, geology and paleontology” that has created the new science called astrobiology.
I’m looking forward to finishing Life As We Do No Know It because Peter Ward is a realist. He readily explores all the options he can muster. In Rare Earth he and Brownlee note that the huge numbers of stars and “their inevitable planets” make the existence of the “intelligent civilizations [in the universe] a near inevitability.” However, the huge distances and time considerations make any contact, even detection, between such civilizations highly unlikely. I believe Carl Sagan did us no favors with his optimism, though the continued SETI search is certainly worth doing, IF we can afford the resources it requires. A big IF as we consider our limits.
As a realist, Ward begins Life... by observing that the universe is so large and diverse, it is “...reasonable to suppose that all manners of life are possible,” but it is also possible that there “...might not be anything except carbon based life-forms, [and] DNA might not be ...just one way but the only way.” We are a sample of one, but we’ve learned enough about physics, astronomy and biochemistry in the last few decades to be realistic about both diverse universality and down-to-Earth chemical probabilities.
I look forward to finishing Ward’s consideration of what life is, here, there and soon to be reinvented. In many labs around the world, scientists are using a variety of approaches to recreate life—everything from re-inventing from scratch to imitating how selection working with self-organizing properties of matter (Some call it the hand of God.) precipitated life on Earth.
Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe
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