Darwin and the Origin of Life

By Anthony Moss

NewSouth Books
Publication date: March 2013

ISBN: 9781603063012

Digital Book format: ePub (Adobe DRM)

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In this volume, excerpted from Charles Darwin: A Celebration of His Life and Legacy (NewSouth Books, 2013), Anthony Moss contributes a thorough historical account of science's attempt to answer the question of how life first emerged from inanimate matter. Beginning with the Greeks, Moss tells a captivating story about the evolution of scientists' thinking and experimentation on the origin of life question. In one of his many letters, Darwin even mused about a warm little pond on the early Earth where simple chemicals exposed to heat, light, and electricity may have begun the changes that ultimately led to life. From the 1970s onward, sophisticated primitive earth "simulation" experiments and laboratory studies of molecular evolution have provided a wealth of data about life's possible origin. Darwin's principle of natural selection guides and inspires all of this work. But now, instead of a shallow, warm little pond, the evidence points to the depths of the ocean as the cradle of life. To say more would spoil this exciting, still unfolding, skillfully told tale.