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 Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
by James Watson -
The Elegant Universe
by Brian Greene -
The End of Bias, A Beginning: The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias
by Jessica Nordell -
A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking -
The Sense of Wonder
by Rachel Carson -
Possible Worlds
by J.B.S. Haldane
