Recommendations from our site
“It’s speculating about alternative biologies. The problem is that we have just one example of biology, the one that happened on Earth. Everything on Earth—from a fungal spore to a blue whale, to a redwood tree—is the same biological experiment. We don’t know what a different biological experiment would lead to, or what the creatures and life forms that emerge would look like. If you vary from the one example we know, you’re immediately in the realm of pure speculation. It’s a tricky business because we simply don’t know. I enjoyed the book. I did have a little asterisk in my head as I read it saying, ‘Wait a minute! We don’t know that that could happen or that it would be like that!’” Read more...
Chris Impey, Scientist
Our most recommended books
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The Elegant Universe
by Brian Greene -
On the Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin & James Costa -
The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are
by Alan Jasanoff -
The Periodic Table
by Primo Levi -
Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth
by Stuart Ritchie -
Mutants
by Armand Marie Leroi
