Origins: Skeptic's

by Robert Shapiro

Book Overview

This is popular science writing in top style: witty, informed, provocative. New York University chemistry professor Shapiro, DNA expert and co-author (with Gerald Feinberg) of Life Beyond Earth,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553343556
• ISBN13: 9780553343557
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.

Customer Reviews

DNA as an eight-hundred pound gorilla!

It's amazing to me that a scientist has to write a book about getting back to the scientific method in the search for how life originated on earth, and it is all because of an eight-hundred pound gorilla called DNA. Robert Shapiro, a leading DNA scientist, says that our genetic coding is so complex that it is a major problem for the theory of evolution. That doesn't mean that science should give up, he says, but that real scientific method should be pursued, instead of religious or scientific mytholology, or unproven beliefs that are strongly held. It shouldn't matter to science how faithfully people believe in the Creation Story of the Bible, that God created everything in seven days, or in the theory of panspermia, that the seeds of life came from outer space. Science, instead, should be about science; it should be about looking at the evidence critically, obtaining proof, being able to repeat results, and standing up to skepticism, or negative questioning of the results. A lot of this is simply not being done, in his opinion. By the way, he sees no conflict between believing in a Creator and science at the same time, but that the two should be separated for purposes of scientific study. You can believe in God and evolution at the same time. I couldn't agree more. The first DNA molecule did not have enough time for 'spontaneous generation' given the overwhelming odds of 1 chance in 10 to the 40,000th power (1 followed by 40,000 zeros). Nobel Prize contender Dr. Fred Hoyle, who coined the term `Big Bang' in the 1940's, came up with this number. In fact, Shapiro says the odds are much greater than that, 1 chance in 10 to the 100 billionth power. These odds have been calculated based on the complexity of the 2000 enzymes in the cell, each consisting of 100 to 1000 specific amino acids linked together in a specific sequence. Hoyle assumed already-assembled amino acids in the pre-biotic soup, and Shapiro assumed `reduced' chemicals instead. Bottom line, either way, DNA just didn't happen spontaneously. Shapiro gives us a history lesson of where we have been scientifically and where we might go from here. He starts with the famous, but overrated Miller-Urey experiments where only a couple of amino acids were produced in an attempt to simulate the pre-biotic condition of early earth, a very long way from the completion of a DNA module. He goes through a lot of scenarios about the early earth and how the principal chemicals got together with the right energy sources to produce that first cell. He admits that it is all conjecture and that it would have to be proven in a laboratory. He goes over the theory that bubbles or mud in the soup could have combined and been exposed to the right chemicals and conditions for something to happen. He proposes looking into the Random Generator that could possibly be a sort of intermediate step in the creation of DNA. He considers the initial, start-up reversal of the Central Dogma of microbology: fr

Straightforward and fun to read

This is a well written introduction to the question of how to approch the issue of life's origination on Earth. Shapiro starts with some comments about the nature of science and of life. Next is a discussion of the age of the Earth. Yes, it is a "little indelicate" to ask the Earth for her age, but we do that anyway. After that, we get into some early speculations about the origin of life, including the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis. This involved a reducing atmosphere and a prebiotic "soup." Some of its assumptions now appear invalid. Shapiro also attacks the fact that the step from abiotic to biotic forms is too quick, requiring a stroke of luck which is far more than astronomical, even worse than the numbers Hoyle and Wickramasinghe came up with. We can get better numbers just by producing a random replicator rather than an enitre organism, but that still can't be done spontaneously. Theories that simply produce nucleic acids by chance don't make sense. We need to find something that gets us there another way, with more plausible steps. Perhaps there is a substrate that can lock the ingredients in place, where they can evolve chemically. And the author mentions some ideas here. I think the most important point should be that it is always dangerous to say that a process can't happen because you haven't thought of a mechanism for it yet! A mechanism may well exist. You or someone else may think of such a mechanism in the future. Shapiro then gets to Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's ideas about life reaching Earth from outer space. And maybe the best part of the book is the way he shoots down some of their specific ideas and claims on the subject. This, of course, does not disprove the idea that life on Earth came from outer space (although at even odds, I'd bet against it). It just means that Hoyle went badly astray here. After that is a discussion of creationism, where the author points out that creationists are "not so much interested in advocating the practice of religion, which they can do in many other, less controversial ways, but rather are trying to subvert the practice of science in areas where the conclusions reached by scientists do not please them." Shapiro also shows that the creationists really have no evidence to base their views on. Making snide comments about the evidence of others does not suffice to constitute evidence for their own views. Shapiro then returns to the question of which came first, nucleic acids or proteins. He feels the nucleic acids couldn't have been first, and I agree, although I feel far less sure about it than he does. He concludes that life appears to have originated on Earth, and that the complicated molecules and structures that we observe in life today are the result of a long process of evolution. That's a sensible conclusion. He adds some speculations about substrates which are plausible as well. I recommend this book.

A wonderful book, whatever side you take

In the Origin of Life debates, most books take one side or the other and argue that point. eg, Behe says God did it. Dawkins says evolution did it. Shapiro doesn't really present a point of view as to "This must be the way it started". Rather, he goes through all the evidence in a witty yet lucid style, and really gives you an appreciation of how complex life is. By the time you've finished reading this, you won't know how life started, but you'll want to read any book you can find and examine all the theories. At least I did. It's a shame this book is out of print, as its without doubt the best introduction to the subject around, even 15 years after it was written.