A Brief History of Creation

October 12, 2015
Journalist Mesler and chemist Cleaves explore how humans have contemplated life’s origins over the millennia, and the authors offer a cogent explanation of the best current thinking on the topic in this broad intellectual history. Because they cover so much ground—moving from the Egyptians through the Greeks all the way to the present—they are forced to be somewhat superficial. Nonetheless, across the arc of their engaging story they raise some fascinating points. Throughout, they touch on the controversy between religion and science, such as the way that those in the mid-19th century who attempted to demonstrate that spontaneous generation occurred regularly were seen as anti-Christian materialists. Unsurprisingly, significant time is spent on the work of Charles Darwin, but he is unfairly criticized for not fully addressing the issue of the origin of life—unfair because that was not the question he was attempting to answer. Yet Mesler and Cleaves recognize that Darwin forever transformed the discussion, since after Darwin, “those who once wondered about the first of each species now wondered about a single first ancestor of all of them.” The last chapters take readers on a tour of current research that will both educate and entertain.

September 15, 2015
Changing ideas of how life appeared on Earth, a mystery that remains unsolved. Mesler teams up with Cleaves-vice president of the International Society for the Study of Life, a professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton-to present a history of science designed for general readers. They fill their account with dozens of fascinating characters, some from the ancient world, some working today, some holding beliefs now seen as ridiculous-the spontaneous generation of frogs and mice, for instance-and some searching for the answer in modern research facilities. Among them are such familiar names as Aristotle, Leeuwenhoek, Pasteur, Crick, and Darwin, as well as many less well-known ones, such as Henry Bastian or Alexander Oparin. The authors not only present them as men of their times, but bring them to life with anecdotes about their eccentricities (noted British scientist J.B.S. Haldane is seen as a pyromaniac who hated to wear socks), their debates, their successes, and their failures. The authors include illustrations, photographs, line drawings, and even a Herblock cartoon, but more would have been welcome. Their narrative has a grand sweep and shows important figures with competing ideas amid evolving worldviews. As a demonstration of changing times and approaches to the mystery of how life began, an appendix includes some intriguing recipes: Johannes van Helmont's recipe for making mice, Bastian's four recipes for making microbes, Sidney Fox's recipe for proteinoid microspheres, and Craig Venter's recipe for creating a cell. A lively, highly readable jaunt through the world of science.

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November 15, 2015

From Aristotle to Charles Darwin, and from Louis Pasteur to Francis Crick, numerous philosophers and scientists have struggled with the question of how life first arose. Coauthors Cleaves (visiting scholar, Inst. for Advanced Study, Princeton Univ.), an organic chemist, and Mesler, a journalist, trace the many speculations about the origin of life proposed over time: spontaneous generation, abiogenesis (life from nonlife), extraterrestrial spores, extremophiles (bacteria that inhabit extreme environments) and self-replicating RNA. In telling this story, the authors not only emphasize how our understanding of the origin of life has been a function of the tools and technology available--whether through the invention of the microscope in the 17th century or the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule in the 20th--but they also reveal how scientific objectivity can be influenced by prevailing religious, political, or professional pressures. The authors' inclusion of an abundance of biographical and historical detail enriches both the science and the scientists. VERDICT This lively, accessible book is recommended for science enthusiasts interested in origin of life issues and the history of science.--CLK

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2015
On the seventh floor of a Harvard research building, a microscope sits beneath a picturetaped to the wallof a hypothetical primal cell. Through this microscope, biologists hope to glimpse confirmation of a theory answering the most fundamental scientific question: How did life begin? In taking their readers to this microscope, Mesler and Cleaves retrace a tortuous path. Beginning with Anaximander and Aristotle, who believed in spontaneous generation of plants and animals, readers see how pioneering researchersincluding Redi and Pasteurrendered such ancient views implausible, only to have their successors rehabilitate them in more sophisticated versions. Readers see how Darwin's own theory of life born in some warm little pond has given way to theories focusing on organic freight in meteorites, on electrical storms in a primal methane atmosphere, and on thermal vents near deep-sea volcanoes. But nothing has accelerated research on biogenesis more than breakthroughs in genetics, enabling scientists to tease from genomes of living creatures the characteristics of their earliest ancestors, to reverse-engineer new life forms, and to simulate the primordial evolution of bubble-encased RNA molecules. As researchers anxiously track the behavior of those RNA molecules, readers find themselves positioned to share in the intellectual excitement now surrounding a seventh-floor microscope!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)