Product Description
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. By what process did life actually begin? How did non-living chemicals become alive? Where, when, and how did life emerge on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet? Author Robert Hazen is one of the world’s foremost scientists seeking answers to these questions. As an astrobiologist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., Robert Hazen has spent many years dealing with the fundamental mechanisms of life’s genesis. As an active research scientist, he is experimentally tracing the spellbinding sequence of events that led to the complicated interactions of carbon-based molecules. Conducting experiments that subject the mix of elements found near deep-ocean vents to the high temperatures and crushing pressures of those lightless depths, he hypothesizes that life may well have begun in such a place, nourished by a rich mixture of minerals and organic compounds and energized by geotectonic forces. Other scientists believe that life may have originated on Earth’s surface, where ocean waves repeatedly lapped a rocky shoreline. Theories abound. But with Hazen as our guide, we are witness to the first, tentative steps towards life, then privy to the breathtaking drama that rapidly unfolds. Genesis throws the debate over life’s origins into brilliant relief, tracing the efforts of scientists all over the world as they confront nature’s most enduring mystery. We are taken out of the lab and into the field to meet the key players, witness the debates, and participate in the discoveries and disappointments that are leading inexorably to a plausible explanation for the momentous beginning of life. The theory of emergence is poised to answer a multitude of questions – even as it raises the possibility that natural processes exist beyond what we now know, perhaps beyond what we even comprehend. Genesis tells the tale of transforming scientific advances in our quest for life’s origins. Written with grace, beauty, and authority, it goes directly to the heart of who we are and how we got here.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 23 reviews)

Fascinating by Jeremy S. Babcock (St. Paul, MN USA)

5 Stars
November 03, 2009
I'll be brief. This book is outstanding. It's a little different reading a science book with a bit of a personal narrative, but it works for this book. The ideas presented are fascinating, and the balance the author gives to all of them is honorable. All the evidence and experiments for origin of life research is laid out beautifully, and it leaves one with a desire to pick up the research oneself. I know it definitely got me thinking that way. This book is a great read, and I guarantee you will learn something fascinating about the way the world, and indeed the cosmos, works.

Believing this book's message takes too much faith for me! by David C. Bossard (PA)

2 Stars
April 08, 2009
The whole book centers around "emergence" which is the notion that complex systems arise from simpler systems. The book attempts to develop this notion in a quasi-scientific way. It tries, but the results are feeble. Most of the examples of "emergence" given in the book are nothing of the sort. The examples play on the sort of misconception that causes the average person to see regularity and form as evidence for complexity -- a crystal for example (snow crystals in particular) that somehow seem to transcend the laws of thermodynamics. In fact, almost all examples given in the book are explainable as nature seeking the lowest energy configuration. On the very first page - the Foreward, pg. ix - the spontaneous formation of soap bubbles is offered (without explicitly saying so) as an example of emergence. But in fact, all the benighted soap molecule does is seek a lower energy configuration. The explanation is this: The soap molecule is a chain that is symmetric on one end and non-symmetric on the other end. Water molecules like symmetry so that end is "hydrophilic" and the other is "hydrophobic." The hydrophobic end lowers the overall energy content by moving away from the water molecules. The result is that the soap spontaneously forms closed surfaces in which the symmetric ends line up in contact with the water and shield the other ends from water. This is why cell membranes have the typical double layer such as shown in Figure B, pg 145 (water inside and outside the membrane with the symmetric ends facing the water), and facilitate "isolation" as in the Figure on pg. 153. This is NOT emergence, but the opposite - seeking the lowest energy configuration. Now it is true that isolation may lead to interesting things -- for example the acidity or concentration of a solute can differ in the isolated volume; physical effects such as osmosis (or even reverse osmosis if there is a pressure differential) can take place. I would like to see that possibility discussed, but as far as I can see, it is not. A more scientific treatment of emergence would show how objects with more rather than less energy content can form spontaneously. I am not hopeful. At root I don't believe that there is a principle of "emergence" floating around in the natural universe. And the examples given here don't change my mind. Here is a homely example of the distinctive character of emergence: A turtle resting at the bottom of a well is NOT emergence. A turtle sitting on the top of a utility pole IS (probably) emergence. And then there is the unfortunate linkage with the Bible, which seems to motivate the Chapter on "God in the Gaps." This author would have been well advised to use another title than "Genesis", and above all, to avoid any remarks about religion, because what he does say is not very helpful. With that title, though, he couldn't avoid it. Just as I suspected, the author has no conception whatsoever about what the Bible says - or its central message. Hazen (pg. 80): "Isn't it more satisfying to believe in a God who created the whole shebang from the outset-- a God of natural laws who stepped back and doesn't meddle in our affairs?" Bible: Without God's meddling, Genesis would not be followed by Exodus. Without God's meddling, the Messiah could not come, and no human could be saved. No, it isn't more satisfying to believe in such a god if you hold the Bible in much esteem, and moreover, that god certainly is not the God of the Bible! All of this is unfortunate, and would that the author had never brought it up. He is trying to make a wholly secular view of life's origin seem acceptable, even reasonable to a person who believes in the God of the Bible. His attempt is a failure that would only appeal to naturalists who have no sympathy with the concept of God. Don't get me wrong. I accept the "doesn't meddle" hypothesis as a possible one to make, but please don't make it sound inevitable, or worse yet, argue that a "fair" God or a reasonable person would espouse it. As to Intelligent Design which is summarily dismissed in this chapter, the "evidence" for it is everywhere. Budding biology students have to be carefully trained - or shamed - to dismiss this evidence for ID. NOW -- take a deep breath -- as a scientist we are obliged to seek natural explanations whenever possible. But it is also our obligation to propose objective ways to test those explanations -- hopefully ways that do not become inextricably intertwined with our particular ideology. I had hoped that this book would give some hints leading to such natural explanations. Unfortunately, what I found was rather tired and shopworn speculation that doesn't seem to have much gravitas. So ... I can't recommend this book. HMS Challenger

the best by bit quirky (Washington DC)

5 Stars
December 13, 2008
I don't usually comment on books widely reviewed here or elsewhere but I have to say that this is a gem. If you are interested in "origin of life" science, particularly emergent systems, this is the book for you.

Good Chemistry Dominated Look at Life's Possible Origins by R. J Szasz (Tokyo, Japan Japan)

4 Stars
October 26, 2008
This book is a rather good overview of major scientific inquiries into the origin of life, as well as a few interesting side journeys into lesser known and (as of now) lesser quantified theories. Hazen as a minerologist has a rather unique take on teh origin for life: not only does he take you on the regular tours from the chemical soupy stews of Miller and Urey, thermophilic bacteria of the black smokers, and exploring the mysteries of the carbon-based life forms, he also does all of the above with an eye for what is happening at a chemical bonding level. That, in my opinion, makes this book a little more interesting thn you regular tour of the usual suspects for the advent of life. Hazen starts basically divides the book into two segments. One is the "top down" approach -- looking at life and extrapolating from exant life forms how such life forms could have come about, and also the "bottom-up" approach -- looking at possible chemical combinations that could possibly yield recurrent metabolism and capability to evolve (ie, have the abilty to trasfer information). Some rather interesting byways in the current search for life include Hazen's own work on Left-Right crystal formation, and the advent of chemical concentrates as a result of natural events in the early earth. All of this is done with a proper appreciation for the ideas, good research papers cited and a list for further reading. I really would have wished that the author would have included a short overview of "further reading" of a strictly non-academic background. While this book is of benefit to both the academic and those who are just interested in science (such as myself), I suspect that the vast majority of his readers are the latter. I would have like a segment to take me into more literature of a non-academic nature, a sort of overview of the current popular literature on the subject would have been helpful. If Mr. Hazen does publish another book, I would surely purchase it.

Emergence on Earth . . . and elsewhere?? by Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

5 Stars
May 27, 2008
Putting it back to front, Hazen lists the three likely scenarios for life's origins: a chemical process leading to metabolism, a chemical process leading to replication, or a combination of the two. The remainder of the book is an exploration of the ideas centered on the way life was started on this planet and the researchers who have conceived or tested them. The list of scientists involved is extensive, but in this finely crafted work, Hazen is able to introduce them, describe their work - and his own - clearly and effectively. With the advantage of arriving at "Life's Origins" studies from an "outside" discipline - geophysics - the author brings a fine sense of detachment to this presentation. In any other account on this topic, the opening would inevitably be a reference to Charles Darwin's "warm little pond". The "warm little pond" idea was tested in 1953 by Stanley Miller, who figures significantly in this story. Darwin's "first cell" clearly required simpler precursors to be assembled and put in operation. As an earth scientist, Hazen is more interested in the role played by chemistry and physics than cell biology, and so begins the book with water's changing properties under increased temperature and pressure. This situation plays a more significant role in life's beginnings than we might guess, since one scenario for the initial steps lies deep in the Earth where water, essential to life, lies buried in rocks, hot and compressed. As it turns out, that water is home to living things - microbes that may not reproduce for over a thousand years, as contrasted with the microbes in your gut that reproduce every twenty minutes. It's a major change in scenarios, going from a little pond to the restrictive environment of the Earth's depths, but Hazen shows how each circumstance has contributed to better understanding of how life came to be. Further, the mechanisms are simple enough to be readily applied on any planet with a suitable environment. The author weaves a number of research accounts into a broad tapestry he calls "emergence". The point of emergence is that there are no great leaps - life had to be built up through a succession of small, cumulative steps. Each step was a chemical process in the proper environment contributing some minimal change that ultimately became what we now call life. Carbon, he reminds us, is the key, but it does little by itself. Water is an essential factor, because its components are essential to building organic molecules. Each of the steps, so far as they are known, are described and fit into the role of life. More important, and in a significant departure from many books on this topic, Hazen describes the laboratory experiments that have verified suppositions or raised new possibilities about life's formation. Field work is not ignored here. The author describes the discovery of life around sea-floor vents and the implications of the Murchison Meteorite - which delivered dozens of types of amino acids - those famous "building blocks" of life to an Australian paddock. How do these highly diverse scenarios merge to produce the trees, pet turtles and people around us we see today? That's what remains to be revealed. The gaps in the processes leading to the first true cell must be closed with descriptions of how various components came together. Many researchers have contributed to resolving those "hows" [there's more than one], and it's in this area that Hazen's three-option conclusion is so significant. For most organic chemical processes to take place, the operation requires protection from interference - a surrounding defensive environment. How does a complex carbon molecule build a protective "shell" while it's busy with its own affairs making new compounds? If the shell already exists - and those lab experiments now demonstrate how that can happen, how does the carbon assemblage break in and take sanctuary from a hostile world? Teasing out the answers to these questions has been the work of many scientists, particularly over the past couple of generations. Life's origins researchers are an irascible lot, sometimes. It's a bit discouraging to read that Stanley Miller, who broke new ground [or perhaps not - German Walter Löb had performed similar work decades before], by generating amino acids in a flask, dismisses the notion of sea-floor vents generating life-promoting processes. And former astronomer Thomas Gold inexplicably rejects any contribution from space to the establishment of life here. The most compelling anecdote in this book however, is of an almost overage PhD student who works out how organic molecules can use - or adapt - the methods rocks use making in crystals. Nick Platt considers this establishes the underlying conditions needed for those molecules which "stack" in layers to create areas leading to the formation of "an information-rich molecule" - RNA, then DNA . Hazen negotiates these troubled conceptual waters with assurance, providing us with a compelling story - or set of stories - relating our beginnings. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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