Author: Conway Morris, Simon
Title: Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
Description: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (2003). orig.boards. 24x16cm, xxi,464 pp.. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ Contents: Looking for Easter Island; Can we break the great code?; Universal Goo: life as a cosmic principle?; The origin of life: straining the soup or our credulity?; Uniquely lucky? The strangeness of Earth; Converging on the extreme; Seeing convergence; Alien convergences?; The non-prevalence of humanoids?; Evolution bound: the ubiquity of convergence;Towards a theology of evolution; Last word ["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" - Publisher's description.

Keywords: Philosophy of Science, Convergence, Biology, Evolution, Evolutionary, , , ,