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bookish_calirican's review
I may come back to it. Just wasn't speaking to me at the moment.
smokeyshouse's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
A wonderful series of essays examining how people have struggled to define and understand what life is... along the way, examining life at the fringes. Engaging writing.
cameliarose's review
5.0
In Life's Edge, Carl Zimmer sets out to explore the line that separates life and non-life, what means to be alive, and the impossible task of giving life a definition.
Many forms of lives or partial lives are examined. Apparently some scientists do not consider viruses as lives, even though when they infect animals, plants and bacterias, they are certainly alive. Under extreme conditions, animals can retreat into "half life", such as bats in hibernation and tardigrades in outer space. They are not dead since they can be revived, but when they exist without metabolism, they do not behave as alive.
Slime, a single-celled organism, is so fascinating that I am going to read more on it. They have no brains, but can solve puzzles, and leave “memories” in the outside world.
The author also examines the definition of life and death in human societies. He peels open the anti-abortionists’ argument that human life begins at conception by stating that fertilized eggs during the early stage of development are alive in the same way as cells in your body are alive, but they are not life yet, and such a view of when human life begins is scientifically untrue and logically flawed.
The history of how brain death became the standard definition of death is fascinating and a little scary.
Of course, the author has something to say about Darwin's theory of evolution and the discovery of DNA, and he focuses on how they affect our understanding of what life is. He then moves on to how life begins on the earth - volcano pond or deep ocean vent? Scientists have created organic molecules from scratch in labs by mimicking volcano ponds that could have existed 3 billion years ago.
The best part of the book is the definition of life, or our continuous effort to define life. Life is what people think they know but hardly able to give an exhaustive definition.
The NASA definition of life is “a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”, which was distilled by Trifonov in 2011 as "Life = Self-Reproduction with Variations". But the argument is far from settled. The last chapter, Four Blue Droplets, the author explains the assembly theory of life. He says, "a theory of life may end up looking a lot like the theory of superconductivity - it may explain life as a particular configuration of matter that gets a special quality from the physics of the universe. "
Many forms of lives or partial lives are examined. Apparently some scientists do not consider viruses as lives, even though when they infect animals, plants and bacterias, they are certainly alive. Under extreme conditions, animals can retreat into "half life", such as bats in hibernation and tardigrades in outer space. They are not dead since they can be revived, but when they exist without metabolism, they do not behave as alive.
Slime, a single-celled organism, is so fascinating that I am going to read more on it. They have no brains, but can solve puzzles, and leave “memories” in the outside world.
The author also examines the definition of life and death in human societies. He peels open the anti-abortionists’ argument that human life begins at conception by stating that fertilized eggs during the early stage of development are alive in the same way as cells in your body are alive, but they are not life yet, and such a view of when human life begins is scientifically untrue and logically flawed.
The history of how brain death became the standard definition of death is fascinating and a little scary.
Of course, the author has something to say about Darwin's theory of evolution and the discovery of DNA, and he focuses on how they affect our understanding of what life is. He then moves on to how life begins on the earth - volcano pond or deep ocean vent? Scientists have created organic molecules from scratch in labs by mimicking volcano ponds that could have existed 3 billion years ago.
The best part of the book is the definition of life, or our continuous effort to define life. Life is what people think they know but hardly able to give an exhaustive definition.
The NASA definition of life is “a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”, which was distilled by Trifonov in 2011 as "Life = Self-Reproduction with Variations". But the argument is far from settled. The last chapter, Four Blue Droplets, the author explains the assembly theory of life. He says, "a theory of life may end up looking a lot like the theory of superconductivity - it may explain life as a particular configuration of matter that gets a special quality from the physics of the universe. "
kpeeps111's review
5.0
Part history of science, part chemistry, part biology, part physics, part philosophy, part ethics, part semantics, all intriguing. This book doesn’t have any answers about what “life” is or where it comes from, but it does have a series of fascinating stories about the scientists and philosophers trying to answer that question through the ages. It urged me to consider familiar stories from a different perspective regarding their implications for the meaning of life. Plus it’s all written in smooth, easy to read prose. Great science writing.
drifterontherun's review
3.0
What does it mean to be alive?
That's the question, embedded in this book's subtitle, that sold me on reading this. But I'm not sure that Carl Zimmer — whose day job is as a science writer for The New York Times — really ever answers the questions. What "Life's Edge" does instead is to turn the question back on the reader.
"So you think life begins at conception, anti-abortion advocates? Well, then what about Physarum — a single-celled yellow slime that grows remarkably fast and shows the ability to remember where it's been? What about viruses? What about skin cells? What about ..."
The fact is, most of the examples Zimmer cites — one in each chapter, at least — I can't even remember. Several scientific names are batted around, and Zimmer makes an effort to boil a number of complicated concepts down, all in an effort to say that, yes, life is hard to define. Anyone who draws a line showing where life begins likely doesn't know what they're talking about — so why be so absolutist about it?
I agree, but I was hoping for something a little bit more ... absolute, I suppose. Or maybe a deeper dive into the ways life has been depicted in culture throughout time. There's a bit of that, but Zimmer largely sticks to the science.
That isn't a surprise, and I have only myself to blame for wanting more of a philosophical — rather than a purely scientific — look at existence.
That's the question, embedded in this book's subtitle, that sold me on reading this. But I'm not sure that Carl Zimmer — whose day job is as a science writer for The New York Times — really ever answers the questions. What "Life's Edge" does instead is to turn the question back on the reader.
"So you think life begins at conception, anti-abortion advocates? Well, then what about Physarum — a single-celled yellow slime that grows remarkably fast and shows the ability to remember where it's been? What about viruses? What about skin cells? What about ..."
The fact is, most of the examples Zimmer cites — one in each chapter, at least — I can't even remember. Several scientific names are batted around, and Zimmer makes an effort to boil a number of complicated concepts down, all in an effort to say that, yes, life is hard to define. Anyone who draws a line showing where life begins likely doesn't know what they're talking about — so why be so absolutist about it?
I agree, but I was hoping for something a little bit more ... absolute, I suppose. Or maybe a deeper dive into the ways life has been depicted in culture throughout time. There's a bit of that, but Zimmer largely sticks to the science.
That isn't a surprise, and I have only myself to blame for wanting more of a philosophical — rather than a purely scientific — look at existence.
paladinboy's review
4.0
Great book, well researched but I would have liked a more conclusive opinion from the author.
Rereading Life’s Ratchet for a more technical review of the moving parts of the cell. Excellent companion piece.
Rereading Life’s Ratchet for a more technical review of the moving parts of the cell. Excellent companion piece.
davidr's review
4.0
"We cannot make artificial life because we cannot agree on what life is. We cannot find life on Mars because we cannot agree what life represents". --Radu Popa
Scientists still cannot agree on a definition of life. That is because life comes in so many forms and structures; there is no single definition that can encompass them all. That is the central theme of Carl Zimmer's book.
Zimmer's writing is excellent! He is a science columnist for the New York Times. He wrote a number of books. I really enjoyed his book [b:She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity|36391536|She Has Her Mother's Laugh The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity|Carl Zimmer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1511221974l/36391536._SY75_.jpg|58083603]. I expect to read additional books he has written.
The early portion of his book discusses what is a human. When did humans first evolve? Zimmer writes a number of interesting anecdotes about primate behaviors and their reactions to death. One hundred-thousand years ago, homo sapiens began carrying out funerals. This demonstrates that people understood that diseases and injuries cause death.
Zimmer writes about flowers that were buried by Ice Age squirrels 30,000 years ago in Siberia. Scientists have nurtured them back into healthy plants. He writes about hibernating bats. He writes about Covid-19. Famous Hungarian biochemist Szent-Györgyi said that self-reproduction is not a requirement for life. As a humorous aside, he gave as an example that a single rabbit cannot reproduce.
The tail end of the book discusses the origin of life. Some scientists believe that the most important components or requirements for life are shell membranes called "liposomes". They act as containers for life's molecules. Scientists have made liposomes by adding water to meteorites. Other scientists find that visiting the Kamchatka Peninsula is a great place to study early-Earth-like conditions. The peninsula is packed with active volcanoes, crater lakes, hot springs and ponds.
This is just a small sample of all the topics discussed in this book. The author does not try to be humorous. Instead, he captivates the reader with an amazing assortment of stories about scientists who have tried to define the edge between the non-living and life. Highly recommended!