Book review: Vital Dust, by Christian de Duve

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------------------------------------------------------------------

Christian de Duve

VITAL DUST

Life as a cosmic imperative
__________________________________________________________________

Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a
[6]Creative Commons License.
__________________________________________________________________

Christian de Duve sets out to tell the whole story of life on earth,
from its earliest beginnings to the emergence of mind, concluding with
some speculations about the future. A pretty ambitious sweep, but de
Duve shared the Nobel Prize for Biology or Medicine in 1974 for work on
the structure and function of cells, so he has a pretty good basis for
the attempt. With his background it isn't surprising that more than
half his text is about life in the form of single cells, but anyway
this is quite appropriate because for most of the time that life has
existed on the Earth it has been as single cells.

The book has seven parts, of which the first four are concerned with
unicellular life. Although intended for a non-specialist audience the
discussion is quite detailed and is hardly light reading, but in return
for the effort involved the reader gets an unusually comprehensive
discussion of the issues. Starting with the origin of life, which de
Duve thinks is likely to be widesrpead throughout the universe, we
progress through the appearance of RNA, followed by DNA and the first
cells. All this is necessarily speculative but de Duve presents a fair
view of the rival hypotheses while not holding back on his own
preferred options.

In Part 5 we at last encounter multicellular organisms, and the pace of
change rapidly accelerates. Plants move from the sea to the land,
turning it green; animals arise and spread through the ocean before
invading the land in their turn. A couple of chapters look at
interactions between life and its environment and at various questions
in genetics such as why there is so much "junk" DNA. Part 6 is about
human evolution, and Part 7 speculates about where intelligent life may
go in time to come.

As I said at the beginning, this book covers an immense stretch of time
and diversity of subject matter and there is far more detail in the
first half than in the second. I think there are really two books here,
at rather different levels, and the two halves will mainly appeal to
different kinds of reader. The first half, dealing with life up to the
unicellular level, is probably the more interesting, because it arises
from de Duve's own field of expertise, though for the same reason it is
also the harder going. The second half would probably be most useful
for a young reader wanting to get a broad overview of evolution without
too many details.

The other thing the book offers is a statement of de Duve's personal
philosophy about the meaning of life. He contrasts two diamatricallhy
opposite viewpoints taken from two very different writers, Jacques
Monod in Chance and Necessity and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The
Phenomenon of Man. De Duve has a good deal of sympathy for Teilhard
although he says he is scientifically closer to Monod. But he thinks
that Teilhard is right to see the universe as meaningful.

For me, this meaning is to be found in the structure of the
universe, which happens to be such as to produce thought by way of
life and mind. Thought, in turn, is a faculty where by the universe
can reflect upon itself, discover its own structure, and apprehend
such immanent entities as truth, beauty, goodness and love. Such is
the meaning of the universe, as I see it.

30 December 2007
__________________________________________________________________

%T Cosmic Dust
%S Life as a cosmic imperative
%A Chrstian de Duve
%I Basic Books
%C New York
%D 1995
%G ISBN 0-465-09045-1
%P xix +362pp
%K biology
%K evolution
__________________________________________________________________


--
Anthony Campbell - ac DeleteThis @acampbell.org.uk
Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)

An HTML version of this review is available at:
http://www.acampbell.org.uk/bookreviews/

Over 300 other reviews of books on acupuncture, biography, biology,
brain and mind, cosmology, cycling, death and dying, evolution, fiction,
history, history of science, medicine, parapsychology, palaeontology,
philology, philosophy, philosophy of science, psychology, religion,
science, and travel may be found at this site.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Christian de Duve

VITAL DUST

Life as a cosmic imperative
__________________________________________________________________

Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a
[6]Creative Commons License.
__________________________________________________________________

Christian de Duve sets out to tell the whole story of life on earth,
from its earliest beginnings to the emergence of mind, concluding with
some speculations about the future. A pretty ambitious sweep, but de
Duve shared the Nobel Prize for Biology or Medicine in 1974 for work on
the structure and function of cells, so he has a pretty good basis for
the attempt. With his background it isn't surprising that more than
half his text is about life in the form of single cells, but anyway
this is quite appropriate because for most of the time that life has
existed on the Earth it has been as single cells.

The book has seven parts, of which the first four are concerned with
unicellular life. Although intended for a non-specialist audience the
discussion is quite detailed and is hardly light reading, but in return
for the effort involved the reader gets an unusually comprehensive
discussion of the issues. Starting with the origin of life, which de
Duve thinks is likely to be widesrpead throughout the universe, we
progress through the appearance of RNA, followed by DNA and the first
cells. All this is necessarily speculative but de Duve presents a fair
view of the rival hypotheses while not holding back on his own
preferred options.

In Part 5 we at last encounter multicellular organisms, and the pace of
change rapidly accelerates. Plants move from the sea to the land,
turning it green; animals arise and spread through the ocean before
invading the land in their turn. A couple of chapters look at
interactions between life and its environment and at various questions
in genetics such as why there is so much "junk" DNA. Part 6 is about
human evolution, and Part 7 speculates about where intelligent life may
go in time to come.

As I said at the beginning, this book covers an immense stretch of time
and diversity of subject matter and there is far more detail in the
first half than in the second. I think there are really two books here,
at rather different levels, and the two halves will mainly appeal to
different kinds of reader. The first half, dealing with life up to the
unicellular level, is probably the more interesting, because it arises
from de Duve's own field of expertise, though for the same reason it is
also the harder going. The second half would probably be most useful
for a young reader wanting to get a broad overview of evolution without
too many details.

The other thing the book offers is a statement of de Duve's personal
philosophy about the meaning of life. He contrasts two diametrically
opposite viewpoints taken from two very different writers, Jacques
Monod in Chance and Necessity and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in The
Phenomenon of Man. De Duve has a good deal of sympathy for Teilhard
although he says he is scientifically closer to Monod. But he thinks
that Teilhard is right to see the universe as meaningful.

For me, this meaning is to be found in the structure of the
universe, which happens to be such as to produce thought by way of
life and mind. Thought, in turn, is a faculty where by the universe
can reflect upon itself, discover its own structure, and apprehend
such immanent entities as truth, beauty, goodness and love. Such is
the meaning of the universe, as I see it.

30 December 2007
__________________________________________________________________

%T Cosmic Dust
%S Life as a cosmic imperative
%A Chrstian de Duve
%I Basic Books
%C New York
%D 1995
%G ISBN 0-465-09045-1
%P xix +362pp
%K biology
%K evolution
__________________________________________________________________


--
Anthony Campbell - ac.DeleteThis@acampbell.org.uk
Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)