The Fifth Miracle : The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

Rating:
Summary: More Questions Than Answers
Review: Davies delivers a decent book reflecting the current state of biogenesis theory: basically more questions than answers. He does seem to stand steadfastly under the mantle of Darwinism yet at the sametime shake at its very foundations. He offers a rather good description of the two opposing world views and current battle: life as an isolated accident vs. biological determinism (life was inevitable). For more on a biological anthropic priniciple I would suggest "Nature's Destiny" by Michael Denton. All in all I would say "The Fifth Miracle" is a very interesting read and overview; certainly more open & honest than other Darwinists about problems with Darwinian theory & Biogenesis.

One side note I do have, was an unnecessary ideological statement made in the book saying, "You are, for example, host to a billion or so atoms that once belonged to Jesus Christ,.." (p.147) because atoms from dead organisms are recycled into the environment and us. The implication of course being that Jesus died and in fact decomposed, which Christians obviously don't believe to be the case. Davies is free to dispute that yet in the context he uses it merely for inflammatory purposes.

Rating:
Summary: fails to answer the big question.
Review: Davis titled his book the Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life, but he never really answers this fundamental question. Sure, science hasn't answered this, and unlike Davies' optimistic assertion that they will accomplish this feat someday, I don't believe science will. If approached from the viewpoint that life arose spontaneously from the haphazard collision of random molecules by the direction of chance then the mystery will never be solved. The process that produced life was so improbable that it can't be reproduced in the laboratory and was truly an event that took place against all odds. Understanding that anything with a value of 1 10^50 is an impossibility, and that the conditions for life to occur would need a much bigger number, attempting to solve this mystery is a waste of time.

Nevertheless, if life is the product of a set of laws written into the universe that favor the creation of life then the search is not futile. Nevertheless, this opens up the possibility for design arguments and the need for a programmer to write such a code; This is a development that I welcome as a Christian, but one that is scorned by other scientists. Some of this attitude comes through at times in Davies book when he states on pg. 31, "However, it is the job of science to solve mysteries without recourse to divine intervention." This assertion is patently false. It is the job of science to explain observable phenomena with a natural explantion if the results are verifiable and make more sense than a mystical argument. It could very well be that the deity who created the universe was a very competent programmer who designed the creation to operate under very specific natural laws, and one of those laws is for the universe to create life under the right conditions. This is just a possibility, but one that should not be eliminated simply because the establishment thinks it should.

In the end this book fails to answer the question that matters most: If life did arise by natural means, then how did it do so? Davies offers absolutely no new insight into this perplexing question. In fact, many of his arguments seem to point against random, senseless and purposless creation. Believing that all the right circumstances could fall into place is just as much grounded in faith as is the idea of a Divine creator. The only new arguments presented by this book were those that speculated that life began underground and not at the surface. Yet, this raises a whole host of questions. RNA or DNA could not develop inside the earth because the tremendous heat and pressure would destroy the volatile molecules. Therefore, one is forced to conclude the cell came first and this gave the RNA and DNA the sufficient shelter to form and replicate. But this just brings us back the chicken-egg paradox and doesn't answer anything since the cell cannot survive efficiently without the help of DNA, RNA, and catalytic enzymes. Stating that the first simple cell was a more crude device which operated on a more crude scale only begs the question and is meaningless conjecture without evidence.

Rating:
Summary: Something to Think About
Review: It's a breezy introductory work by a person very much at the current heart of the debate, and as such is a good recommendation. The problem is that it is a popular book directed at the common reader, nothing difficult, nothing particularly new or stimulating. It is right at the interface of evolutionary biology and abiogenesis, as such would be a good entry level book for a high school student who would like to learn more about the broad subject material without being bogged down in the details of the controversies. He seems to hit all the important issues in the topic, shows that he has thought deeply about the subject material and is really interested in the reader getting the gist of the debate elements. The big advantage is completeness of coverage, the drawback is the shallowness of each chapter, where you really want to know more about what Davies has thought about.

Rating:
Summary: An absolutely new view of the origin of life
Review: Origin of life always starts with the first primitive cells in the popular books. This is that kind of book (popular) but the first one where I could read about the pre-biotic life.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview. Very controversial propositions.
Review: Paul Davies gives in an easy understandable vocabulary his vision on different theories about the origin of life on earth (panspermia, Martian meteorites, primordial soups ...).
An important point mentioned in this book is that probably the first terrestrial organisms lived deep underground in geothermally heated rocks.

But there is more controversial material. After searching in vain for God's place in physics (The Mind of God), prof. Davies looks now for an evolutionary goal as an alternative for the 'nihilistic philosophy of the pointless universe'. This goal is life and consciousness, created by a self-organizing and self-complexifying universe. A universe in which the emergence of thinking beings is a fundamental and integral part of the overall scheme of things." (p. 272-3)

The main motor behind this evolution should be a blend of molecular Darwinism and the 'law' of organizational complexity, a mix of the second law of thermodynamics, physics, computation and chemistry.
Paul Davies is not sure how it could work, but he states: "the atom treated as a particle corresponds to hardware. When a quantum measurement is made, the wave "collapses" ... But this in turn affects the subsequent behaviour of the particle. There is thus a sort of hardware-software entanglement in quantum mechanics ... Could some sort of quantum-organizing process be just what is needed to explain the origin of informational macromolecules?" (p. 260-1)

This is a very bold speculation. But, for me, it is too beautiful to be true.
Gerald M. Edelman in his book 'Bright Air, Brilliant Fire' convinced me that the origin of consciousness doesn't lay on the quantum but on the biological level (biochemical processes). Secondly, I believe that Gould and Dawkins are right and that we live in a pointless universe. Thirdly, Roger Penrose convinced me that trying to present the mind as a computer is a dead end.

Even if you don't agree with all his propositions, you should read this compelling book, which flows like a dazzling waterfall.

Rating:
Summary: A Science Thriller Filled with Interesting Speculation
Review: Paul Davies is a good writer because he recognizes that the best science topics yield more than one answer. This book explores several likely explanations for the origin of life. What is particularly interesting about Davies's coverage is that he sees life primarly as an information processing phenomenon. For the paradox of life becomes that it must be based upon a random pattern of information, but that pattern is not so random as to be chaotic and meaningless. Life walks the tightrope over the abyss of total disorder and below the ceiling of completely predictable information. Neither is suitable for life. The reader doesn't find any absolute answers here. But for a thought-provoking discussion on the meaning of what constitutes a living thing, the book does an excellent job.

Rating:
Summary: An Engaging Overview
Review: The Fifth Miracle by Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist who works primarily on the topic of quantum gravity, is a very readable book on the origin of life. Although there is little that is new in the text, the author has put the information into perspective for the reader, discussing a number of aspects and points of view. Probably one of the most salient points he makes is that if , as some would have us believe, life is ubiquitous to the universe to the extent that water equals life, then the basic scientific world view may have to be overhauled. He writes:

In claiming that water means life, NASA scientists are not merely being upbeat about their project. They are making--tacitly--a huge [italics] and profound assumption about the nature of nature. They are saying, in effect, that the laws of the universe are cunningly contrived to coax life into being against the raw odds; that the mathematical principles of physics, in their elegant simplicity, somehow know in advance about life and its vast complexity. If life follows from soup with causal dependability, the laws of nature encode a hidden subtext, a cosmic imperative, which tells them: 'Make life!' And, through life, its by-products: mind, knowledge, understanding. It means the laws of the universe have engineered their own comprehension. This is a breathtaking vision of nature, magnificent and uplifting in its majestic sweep. I hope it is correct. It would be wonderful if it were correct. But if it is, it represents a shift in the scientific world-view as profound as that initiated by Copernicus and Darwin put together. It should not be glossed over with glib statements that water plus organics equals life, obviously, for it is far from obvious (p. 246).

This book and Rare Earth by Peter Douglas Ward and Donald Brownlee pretty much cover the life in the universe topic for anyone interested in the topic, and both are engagingly written and understandable.

Rating:
Summary: The best little book I have read in years.
Review: The fifth miracle is an outstanding little book that discloses a miriad of possibilities about the origin of life on earth. The controversy arises when Davis exposes some unorthodox theories like Panspermia, the truth is that when he does that he is really persuasive. Paul Davies is an intelligent scientist and one that has kept updated and with experience on field, so his arguments are no less than powerful and convincing, once again, even the controversial ones. Though he doesn't take part in most of the different theories explained, his book might look a little biased, but great, besides he may even be right.

Rating:
Summary: Paul Davies gives us the State of the Art on this subject
Review: The origin of life is one of the major puzzles that science is trying, since the dawn of human history, to solve. Paul Davies illustrates most clearly what results humanity has been able to glean by evidence, observation, experiments and thought. A must read for both the interested layman and the professional. One of Paul Davies' best books.Most notable for his emphasis on the problem of the origin of information stored in the DNA.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Astounding
Review: This book is my Science recommendation for 2004. As usual Davies ploughes through a whole whack of cosmic data and implications to look at the question of life: How did it begin? What are the current theories of life? What are the necessary conditions for life forms.

It is interesting to note that all of these questions are pre-evolution questions, since we do not need a mechanism to add, refine or make life more complex -- natural selection does that wonderfully --- the central question of life is how did it arise in the most simplest of organisms.

In this wonderful read, Davies analyses first the physics of life, entropy, open systems and thermodynamic equilibrium. It is this approach that Davies uses that I find personally so fascinating since it is one that is often ignored by a lot of chemists and biologists, but is it germane -- what kind of physical properties are necessary in the universe for life to arise? This is a real good qustion and Davies gives us a good intro tour of the how complexity can arise in an environment which always seems to be striving towards thermodynamic equillibrium.

The second part of the book could be called the biochemical reasons necessary for life. Here Davies looks at elementary organisation and gives us a really good history of the experimentation in this area, from the elementary forces that may be required to bring about nucleotides, proteins and polypeptide strings.

One really interesting thing Davies does is trace back the evolutionary history of organisms and the current data that evolutionary forces were at work for almost 4 billion years. From this he describes ancestors from this time that may still be living on the earth (meso/thermophilic bacteria). A really great way of looking at evolution.

The last chapters sort of synthethise the physics and chemistry parts and look at the implications of the planetary forces, both gradual and catastrophic over the history of the earth and their potential to influence the rise of life and shape the evolutionary forces.

There is a lot of food for thought here and of course no one knows how life started, but it is clear that current theory and evidence are making science more interesting than even before. We may never know as Davies states, but in knowing more and more we are attaining the best goals of mankind.

A wonderful book with science as the only aim.

It should be stated that Davies has no political axe to grind with anyone and his writing is ideologically clean. But let there be no misunderstanding, when in doubt there is no evoking of blind forces in any or Davies books. His passion is science and reason and, like most people who think deeply, he regards the constant state of unknowing as a challenge as a never ending challenge.

For the person who says that Davies is not "open-minded" because he does not consider (notice I did not say believe) that a omnipresent God waved his hand and made us... that is simple. Personal belief has nothing to do with science since it yields nothing of benefit to Science. Even if Davies did personally believe that a God created life, that does not get anyone closer to understanding life... And this is the fundemental point that people who believe in Gods (or as with the current fashion, intelligent design) as ulimate cause fall into --- intelligent design, even if right is not science, it cannot be proved. It is a sterile end on the path of unknowing.

Thank God for people like Davies that can remind us that Science alone can yeild truth -- that it will never yield all of the truths is the central tenet of Science... and with that there is comfort, because it means that reason, and man advances.