[tt] Amazon.com: Simon Conway Morris: Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe

Sat Oct 6 09:22:07 UTC 2007

Simon Conway Morris: Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521827043
[This looks like it is worth checking into. Let me know.]

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Editorial Reviews

In a crisp, passionate argument sure to draw the wrath of many
biologists, Simon Conway Morris defends his belief that
evolutionary science is misguided without a somewhat religious
notion of the significance of human intelligence and existence. At
the same time, he is careful to distance himself from creation
"scientists" by reminding readers that:
Evolution is true, it happens, it is the way the world is, and
we too are one of its products. This does not mean that
evolution does not have metaphysical implications; I remain
convinced that this is the case.
Amazon.com
--------
He uses convergence as his foundation, defining it as "the
recurrent tendency of biological organization to arrive at the same
'solution' to a particular 'need'" and offering a multitude of
examples, including eusociality, olfaction, and the generation of
electrical fields. In outlining the direction and inevitability he
believes is inherent in evolution, Conway Morris stacks up
compelling evidence in the form of a revealed "protein hyperspace"
that limits the possibilities of amino acid combination to a few,
often repeated (pre-ordained?) forms. While he skirts a focus on
the relentless environmental pressures that result in adaptation,
Conway Morris also derides the notion that the gene rules
evolution. He accuses his opponents (primarily Stephen Jay Gould
and Richard Dawkins) "genetic fundamentalism" who use "sleights of
hand, special pleading, and sanctimoniousness... trying to smuggle
back the moral principle through the agency of the gene." Dense
with examples and complex biological proofs, Life's Solution is not
an easy explanation of convergence for general readers. Still, it
is a clear and exciting elucidation of the theory that evolution
might have predictable outcomes, even for those who find Conway
Morris' metaphysical arguments unconvincing. --Therese Littleton
Review
---------
"Life's Solution is an absorbing presentation written to challenge
and inform the mind of the reader. Life's Solution is a superb
contribution to both Contemporary Philosophy Studies academic
reference collections and University level and Evolutionary Biology
reading lists." Is Library Bookwatch, December 2003
"Simon Conway Morris's bold new book, Life's Solution, challenges
this Darwinian orthodoxy by extending ideas he presented in his
Crucible of Creation. Conway Morris presents scores of fascinating
examples that are less familiar. The lesson is clear. The living
world is peppered with recurrent themes; it is not an accumulation
of unique events." -- New York Times Book Review
---------
"Simon Conway Morris's bold new book, Life's Solution, challenges
[the] Darwinian orthodoxy by extending ideas he presented in his
'Crucible of Creation'...Conway Morris presents scores of
fascinating examples that are less familiar. The lesson is clear.
The living world is peppered wtih recurrent themes; it is not an
accumulation of unique events." New York Times Book Review
"Are human beings the insignificant products of countless quirky
biological accidents, or the expected result of evolutionary
patterns deeply embedded in the structure of natural selection?
Drawing upon diverse biological evidence, Conway Morris
convincingly argues that the general features of our bodies and
minds are indeed written into the laws of the universe. This is a
truly inspiring book, and a welcome antidote to the bleak nihilism
of the ultra-Darwinists." Paul Davies, Author of Mind of God
Praise for previous book... "Having spent four centuries taking the
world to bits and trying to find out what makes it tick, in the
21st century scientists are now trying to fit the pieces together
and understand why the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Simon Conway Morris provides the best overview, from a biolgical
viewpoint, of how complexity on the large scale arises from simple
laws on the small scale, and why creatures like us may not be the
accidents that many suppose. This is the most important book about
evolution since The Selfish Gene; essential reading for everyone
who has wondered about why we are here in a Universe that seems
tailor-made for life. John Gribbin, Author of Science: A History
"Morris gives a detailed and fascinating account of numerous
examples of evolutionary convergence, ranging in scale and
complexity from molecular functions to physiology, morphology,
sensory organs, behavior, complex social systems, and, finally,
intelligence. Highly recommended for both academic and larger
public libraries." Library Journal
------------
"If you have not done so ... read Life's Solution: Inevitable
Humans in a Lonely Universe." Toronto, Ontario Globe & Mail
______________________________________________________________

Product Details
* Hardcover: 464 pages
* Publisher: Cambridge University Press (September 8, 2003)
* Average Customer Review: [stars-4-0._V47081936_.gif] based on
24 reviews. (Write a review.)
* Amazon.com Sales Rank: #228,076 in Books (See Bestsellers in
Books)

#84 in Books > Science > Biological Sciences > Paleontology
===========
First Sentence:
I am a bipedal hominid , of average cranial capacity, write my
manuscripts with a fountain pen, and loathe jogging. Read the first
page
----
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
prebiotic milieu, molecular convergence, honorary mammal,
behavioural convergence, bombardment episode, attine ants,
circumstellar habitable zone, mormyrid fish,
extraterrestrial amino acids, various biological properties,
carbonaceous meteorites, crystallin proteins, subterranean mammals,
gas gland, skeleton space, prebiotic molecules,
convergent features, evolutionary convergence, repeated evolution,
trichromatic vision, suitable planet, giant impact, dolphin brains,
other convergences, mosaic evolution
----
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New Zealand, South America, Old World, Oort Cloud, Milky Way,
Leslie Orgel, David Kistner, Elsevier Science, Lori Marino,
North America, George Wald, Robert Shapiro, Southern Ocean,
Allan Hills, California State University,
Cambridge University Press, Iris Fry, Pacific Ocean, South Africa

Citations (learn more)
This book cites 27 books:
* The Solar System (3 Vol Set) (Magill's Choice) (3 Vol Set)
(Magill's Choice) by Roger Smith on 10 pages
* Encyclopedia of the Solar System by Paul Weissman in Back
Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
* Solar System (Planet Earth, No 16) by Kendrick Frazier in Back
Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
* Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short
Introductions) by Bernard Wood in Back Matter (1), and Back
Matter (2)
* The Solar System (with AceAstronomy, Virtual Astronomy Labs
Printed Access Card) by Michael A. Seeds in Back Matter (1),
and Back Matter (2)
----
2 books cite this book:
* By Design or By Chance? The Growing Controversy on the Origins
of Life in the Universe by Denyse O'Leary on page 29, and Back
Matter
* God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science by
Neil A. Manson in Front Matter
=============
Customer Reviews
24 Reviews
5 star: 54% (13)
4 star: 16% (4)
3 star: 12% (3)
2 star: 12% (3)
1 star: 4% (1)
Average Customer Review
[stars-4-0._V47081936_.gif] (24 customer reviews)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
[stars-4-0._V47081936_.gif] Lively, mind-expanding, infuriating and
incisive, October 6, 2003
By Edwin Kite (Cambridge, England) - See all my reviews
"Life's solution" celebrates convergent evolution, which Conway
Morris uses to account both for the apparent progress of life from
amoeba to whale, and its end in Homo Sapiens. He extends this
notion to the emergence of human society, and the prospects of life
"altogether elsewhere".

The issue of whether life history has an arrow of destiny at all
(rather than random bumbling that may occasionally hit an
anthropomorphic jackpot) is still up in the air. Natural selection
certainly produces environmental adaptation over the fine grain of
centuries and millenia. And over millions of years, an increase in
complexity has been observed in such esoteric organs as arthropod
appendages and crinoid feeding nets. But at the grandest scale, we
have little to go on other than Victorian ideas that reptiles were
bested by mammals in a great Darwinian struggle, which is nonsense.
Bad luck - a bad asteroid - wiped out the dinosaurs, leaving empty
space that mammals could fill. 180 million years earlier, it was
the ancestors of mammals that drew the short straw.

But Conway Morris, unusually, isn't interested in whose sperm
survives the apocalypse. Since environments cleave form to
function, the same general biological properties arise everywhere.
So New Caledonia, lacking mammalian predators, evolved giant
flightless birds, the tigrish Sylviornus, with hooked beaks. (They
were wiped out by the ancestral Polynesians, with good reason).
Aping Darwin's writing, "Life's solution" is a book of examples, an
accumulation of examples of convergence in action. This structure
lends the book a bitty texture; it says the same thing over and
over again, so reading five pages at a sitting will not lose the
thread. This makes it an ideal book for busy readers.

The book is threaded with the notion of "biological hyperspace," a
conceptual landscape in which each point corresponds to a design
for life. Hills in the landscape are poorly adapted to the
environment, and, over time, natural selection nudges life into the
better-adapted valleys. Although life takes very varied routes
through this landscape, functional constraints limit the number of
destinations - each corresponding to an ecological syndrome such as
hive society, the compound eye or intelligence. Michael Denton and
Craig Marshall claim that "underlying all the diversity of life is
a finite set of natural forms that will recur over and over again
anywhere in the cosmos where there is carbon-based life." This
refers to proteins, not pianists, but makes a key point:
progress-through-convergence is equivalent to destiny. And
teleology, with its register of "inferior" and "better" forms, is a
dangerous brew. Conway Morris wonders how much of convergence may
be the working-out of the particular inherent potential of the
animal genetic architecture. At what point, he wonders, did
intelligence, become inevitable? His answer: close to the origin of
life.

Convergence is powerful, and Conway Morris is right to emphasise
it's importance in driving evolution over millions of years. But
his attempt to extend it to the billions of years of Earth's story
is tenuous. There are several problems. The main events in the
early evolution of life - sex, oxygen, and the chlorophyll/Rubisco
stitch-up - were probably accidents. Niche specialisation erodes
the genetic plasticity that convergence needs. And once life
underwent the Cambrian Explosion - somehow turning from slime into
animals - it became especially vulnerable to rare shocks and their
afteraffects.

Here's a catastrophic example. I am united with gerbils and the
platypus by having a kind of window in my skull, just behind the
eyes. This makes me a synapsid. The dinosaurs (with two holes in
their heads) were diapsids, and hole-less turtles are anapsids. For
argument's sake, let's reroute the asteroid that hit Earth 251
million years ago, hitting Pangaea instead of Panthallasa.
Destruction on the supercontinent is total; the synapsids and
diapsids are wiped out; only a few well-armoured, ageless anapsids
survive to reconquer the planet. But once the anapsid syndrome -
toothless, stiff-necked, boneheaded, and boxed inside tough shells
- became dominant, it is difficult to see how the delicate, social
sentients seen as inevitable by Conway Morris could have evolved.
Until the next disaster, Earth would have been in mutant turtle
lockdown.

Conway Morris' chapters on the origin of life are unfortunate. He
talks about chemistries, while most workers talk about energies and
information. "Life's solution" glibly dismisses the theory of
self-organisation and criticality, the rock and foundation of the
claim that life is a cosmic principle.

This book continues an argument with the late, brilliant Harvard
evolutionary theorist Stephen Jay Gould, whose overweight prose was
matched only by his girth. He called progress "a noxious,
culturally embedded, untestable, nonoperational, intractable idea
that must be replaced." Conway Morris countered that progress
remained a cornerstone of evolutionary understanding. This was not
just an argument about science, because each man saw the other's
theory as the surface expression of an iceberg of repugnant dogma.
In 1999, Gould wrote that he "would value... explicit attention to
the sources of [Conway Morris'] own unexamined beliefs" - i.e.,
Christianity.

Conway Morris' reply is an attempt to construct a theology of
evolution. Monotheism (founded on holy mystery) is to science
(founded on reason) as oil to water: coexistence is possible but
mixing requires plenty of energy. The last Cambridge scholar to
try, the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, lost his footing badly. "Life's
Solution" is more cautious. Joining the ellipses, hints, and things
implied but left unsaid, Conway Morris appears to believe that life
was created by divine sparkplug and that convergence was
designed-in to jolly life along the golden path from bog to Bhopal.
Make of this what you will, but my instincts are that this "God?
The Naked Mole Rats Say Yes!" stuff, popularised by Connie Barrow,
is a form of intellectual cowardice. It's as unenlightening and
unenlightened as the long-dead view that an irreducible "vital
force" accounted for biological energy. (In one sense it does; it's
called citric acid). Natural order need be neither implicate nor
inscribed, yet retains its wonder and majesty.
----------
18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] Life is more than the sum of its
parts., October 13, 2004
By Matt Benzing "Librarian" (Troy, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
A study of the phenomena of convergence: "the recurrent tendency of
biological organization to arrive at the same 'solution' to a
particular 'need'".
Cambridge paleontologist Morris gives us a tour of the biological
universe, pointing out how various environmental adaptations seem
to follow similar patterns, hinting at some higher purpose at work
in the cosmos. I don't believe that you can ever rationally prove
God's existence; faith is intuitive. Yet it is reassuring to know
that it is possible to integrate a respect for science and learning
with that faith.
This is an exhaustive and meticulous book that makes an argument
for human significance and religious meaning without abandoning
evolutionary biology or legitimate science.
------------
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] Delightful and thought provoking,
February 25, 2004
By Jay W. Richards (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my
reviews
(REAL NAME)
Life's Solution is one of those books that does not easily submit
to a pithy review. The book is many things. It is first of all a
striking and elegantly written catalogue of what Conway Morris
calls "the ubiquity of convergence" in the biological world.

While many folks are familiar with a handful of examples of
convergence (the camera eye and those marsupials in Australia come
to mind), it is remarkable how pervasive the phenomenon is. In
fact, although I still don't know what to make of it, Conway Morris
convinced me that convergence is a fact about the world that
deserves more attention than it has received.

But the book is much more than a mere compendium of examples. For
Conway Morris uses the ubiquity of convergence as a counterweight
to the almost orthodox view that the history of life is a governed
by a large helping of luck and accident, and that, to paraphrase
S.J. Gould, if we reran the tape of life's history, it would have
turned out entirely differently. Convergence suggests that,
whatever the role played by happenstance, natural selection has
worked under narrow constraints built into the structure of
reality.

Conway Morris concludes the book with some perhaps preliminary
discussions about the possibility of religious and scientific
understandings of the world peacefully co-existing. Here as
elswhere, Conway Morris only hints at certain ideas rather than
pursuing them exhaustively. As a result, some reviewers have
written unfair and uncharitable things about the book. But I, for
one, was left with much to ponder, and with the hope that Conway
Morris will continue his provocative explorations.
===========
Most Recent Customer Reviews
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] Morris' Monumental Masterwork
Simon Conway Morris in "Life's Solution" makes his point. Evolution
does seem to be going somewhere, and human-like intelligence is
along the way (not to be confused with the... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Stephen P. Smith
----
[stars-4-0._V47081936_.gif] A good "purely scientific" critique of
neo-Darwinism
For those of us who follow the modern debates about evolution,
Intelligent Design theories, the relationship between science and
faith, etc. Read more
Published 6 months ago by sodakmonk
---------
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] An original new perspective on life
Conway Morris argues that convergence is ubiquitous across all
forms of life, and that if the 'tape' of evolution were to be run
again it would produce something similar to what... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Alexander Williams
----------
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] A cracker
This has got to be one of the most interesting reads for a few
years. Cambridge professor and evolutionay paleontologist Conway
Morris essentially develops the almost Platonic... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Samuel Wyles
---------
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] An amazing book
Professor Morris's book, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a
Lonely Universe, is a superb book. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Atheen Hills
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[stars-2-0._V47081858_.gif] Not good enough or convincing enough
As another reviewer wrote Conway Morris produces lots of examples
like Darwin. However unlike Darwin the examples aren't convincing,
we fail to go from the 'could have' to 'must... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Richard Laven
--------
[stars-3-0._V47082372_.gif] I didn't buy his argument.
I felt one of the great weaknesses of the book was that much of it
seemed like a long list of various traits and behaviors which are
convergently shared by evolutionarily distinct... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Richard Schroeder
-----------
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] New frontiers for the science of
biological evolution and for the theoretical biology
As I am a professor of evolution and theoretical biology at the
University of Ljubljana, I read the book Life's solution with a
great interest. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Professor Igor Jerman
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[stars-2-0._V47081858_.gif] Illuminating, Irritating, and Offensive
This book is in part illuminating, in part irritating, and in part
offensive.
The stated purpose of the book is to show that the probability of
the emergence of life... Read more
Published on September 25, 2005 by Truth Seeker
-------
[stars-5-0._V47081849_.gif] A welcome perspective
Amazon.com users interested in evaluating whether or not to order
LIFE'S SOLUTION should be clear about one thing: Conway Morris
makes life difficult for Dawkins, Dennett, Ruse... Read more
Published on March 29, 2005 by C. Coffman