Record details

• ISBN: 9780393083552
• ISBN: 0393083551
• Physical Description: print
  xvii, 312 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
• Edition: First edition
• Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2016]
• Copyright: ©2016

Content descriptions

General Note:

Work available in 2015.

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-286) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

1. By the action of your sun. Ancients ask where life comes from ; Anaximander explains the natural world ; Aristotle writes of "spontaneous generation" -- 2. Provando e riprovando. Francesco Redi and the scientific method ; Van Helmont's recipe for mice ; "All life comes from an egg" -- 3. The eye of a gnat. The Enlightenment transforms science ; Hooke pens Micrographia ; Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovers the microscopic world -- 4. The laboratory of the atheists. Voltaire subscribes to intelligent design ; Atheists seize upon the origin of life ; Buffon observes "reproduction" -- 5. A vital force. Andrew Crosse's "extraordinary experiment" ; Vitalism and "imponderable fluids" ; Vestiges of the natural history of creation captivates Britain -- 6. Breathed by the creator into a few forms or one. The Beagle sets sail for the Galápagos ; The Origin of species wins converts ; Charles Darwin imagines a "warm little pond" -- 7. Pleasant, though they be deceitful dreams. Pasteur dispels the notion of a "useless God" ; Thomas Huxley grooms a new generation ; The germ theory of disease versus spontaneous generation -- 8. No vestige of a beginning. The earth grows ever older ; J.B.S. Haldane imagines a "half-living" thing ; Alexander Oparin reimagines an ancient planet -- 9. A laboratory earth. Stanley Miller creates the precursors for life ; Scientists flock to exobiology ; NASA enters the origin-of-life game -- 10. The nucleic acid monopoly. Apollo 11 looks for clues on the moon ; Sidney Fox and his proteinoid microspheres ; Crick and Watson discover "the secret of life" -- 11. Life everywhere. An enigmatic Martian rock ; Panspermia recisited ; Life in meteorites? -- 12. One primordial form. The last universal common ancestor ; The Woesian revolution ; Scientists look to undersea vents -- 13. A cell is born. The birth of the RNA world ; Genetic engineering opens doors ; A new gensis? -- Epilogue -- Appendix: Recipes for life.

Search for related items by subject

Subject:

Life Origin Research History

Life Origin Philosophy History

Biology History

Science History