Product Description
Half a century ago, before the discovery of DNA, the Austrian physicist and philosopher Erwin Schrödinger inspired a generation of scientists by rephrasing the fascinating philosophical question: What is life? Using their expansive understanding of recent science to wonderful effect, acclaimed authors Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan revisit this timeless question in a fast-moving, wide-ranging narrative that combines rigorous science with philosophy, history, and poetry. The authors move deftly across a dazzling array of topics--from the dynamics of the bacterial realm, to the connection between sex and death, to theories of spirit and matter. They delve into the origins of life, offering the startling suggestion that life--not just human life--is free to act and has played an unexpectedly large part in its own evolution. Transcending the various formal concepts of life, this captivating book offers a unique overview of life's history, essences, and future.
Supplementing the text are stunning illustrations that range from the smallest known organism (Mycoplasma bacteria) to the largest (the biosphere itself). Creatures both strange and familiar enhance the pages of What Is Life? Their existence prompts readers to reconsider preconceptions not only about life but also about their own part in it.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 11 reviews)

If you can Only Read One

If you can Only Read One trade "science" book in your life, this should be the one. It is a slow-motion whirlwind trip into the depths of time and life on planet Earth.
January 14, 2007

Savor science presented at its poetic best

The hardcover edition of this book (What is Life? by Margulis & Sagan) is a treasure in my extensive library. Clever writing and beautiful photographs bring out fascinating ideas. This is a book to be savored.
November 22, 2004

A worthy exploration of a difficult question!

Lynn Margulis, as with many popular science writers, tends to get in a little bit of trouble both with her professional peers and with the devotees of her professional peers. Academic disciplines are a bit akin to competing schools of secular theology, with much (if not most) of the difficulty arising from what the layman *thinks* the masters say. Margulis is decidedly *not*, for example, the flaming vitalist or Earth Mother worshipper that some have painted her as (due to her subscription to the "Gaia" hypothesis), and Richard Dawkins was much more modest in his conception of the "meme" than some of his successors (notably Susan Blackmore) have been. If one can get past such hangups the thoughts of great scientists are a good deal more subtle than we sometimes think, and Lynn Margulis is no exception.

She and her son Dorion Sagan both have a flair for lucid, non-technical writing, and the picture they paint--of life as a thermodynamically open system, responding as much to symbiosis and cooperation as it does to extinction and competition--is both intellectually interesting and aesthetically pleasing. Her neo-Darwinist cohorts might occasionally overstate the role of competition in natural selection as much as she can overstate the role of cooperation, but there seems no reason to deny that both factors play important (and complementary) roles in the natural world. Dr. Margulis' tour of the microbial and multicellular worlds is truly fascinating; I found myself learning more than I ever thought I would want to know about fungi, mushrooms, bacteria and protists, and remaining delightfully thirsty for more. Where she is making some hypothetical propositions, she usually clearly identifies these and doesn't pass them off as fact. However, she does include a certain paean to Gaia--the idea of biological life on earth functioning as a coevolutionary, self-regulating ecosystem/organism that helps maintain an earthly enviornment conducive to life as we know it--that some (like myself) might find compelling, while others will find it irrelevant. The jury's still out on Gaia, but she makes a persuasive case for why such a concept should be considered alongside the larger question of "what is life?" Overall, a worthy addition to the armchair scientist's bookshelf, alongside anything by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, or Ernst Mayr.
October 12, 2004

The best of the best.

I was totally engrossed with this book and for several weeks it became
an appendage. It is filled with awsome facts and enlightenments.
My only disappointment was that I am just an animal like all others on
this earth and nothing was said concerning what happens to me when
fungi take over. I mean "Me". Where do I go? Right now I beleive I just
plain die. It makes life a bit harder to face, to think all this is gone when
I die. Can anyone recommend a book that will help to give me an idea
as to what happens to my consciousness when I die??
May 01, 2004

Beyond biology

I was as enthralled as other reviewers with the amazing facts in this book. My favorite: bacteria don't age; they can die from accidental causes but "programmed death" started with eukaryotes. The authors show that death is necessary for organisms (like us) that practice meiotic cell division.

But this book is far more than a random collection of facts. Margulis and her collaborators do an amazing job of assembling an understandable model of life using parts carefully selected from a vast body of biological knowledge. While a one-sentence definition is still elusive, the reader builds up a picture of life's most pertinent characteristics, as exhibited by the truly astounding diversity of living things on this planet. By the time I finished, I was satisfied that the authors had answered the question.

You don't need to be a biologist to understand and enjoy this book. Its beauty is that the greatest scientific thinking on the most complex topics has been presented in common english, with necessary scientific terms explained as they are introduced. If you are intrigued by the question of life, I doubt there's a more complete, accurate, understandable, and enjoyable answer available than this book.
January 08, 2003

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution
by Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan

Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution
by Lynn Margulis

Acquiring Genomes: The Theory of the Origins of the Species
by Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan

What Is Life?: with "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches"
by Erwin Schrodinger
by Roger Penrose

Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the nature of Nature (Sciencewriters)
by Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan