Thus far, 2018 has been a terrific year for popular science books and two stand out in particular for confronting head-on some of the biggest and most difficult questions scientists confront. In his new masterpiece, The Equations of Life: How Physics Shapes Evolution, biophysicist Charles S. Cockell wades with admirable fortitude into the waters of how the laws of physics and mathematics place constraints—and find solutions—to the great challenges of survival. How inevitable was it that life would land on DNA as the repository of genetic information? Why have the vast majority of species settled on two biological sexes? What’s so special about phospholipids that all living cells use them for their membranes? How do ladybugs regulate their temperature? These are just a few of the incredibly complicated biological questions that actually have quite simple mathematical answers, as Cockell demonstrates.
Biologist Kenneth R. Miller tackles questions no smaller than the human intellect itself in his fourth book, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will. In it, Miller gives a brief but comprehensive summary of the most important scientific and philosophical work aimed at explaining if and how humans have a true and autonomous inner self. As Miller astutely acknowledges, even the language we use to address this question—words like autonomy, individual, thought, perception, intention, awareness, and conscience—cannot be taken for granted. If these words are to have any meaning whatsoever, that meaning must be created in the very instrument they are meant to describe, the human mind. It is not difficult to tie oneself into rhetorical knots while attempting to discuss the nature of consciousness, yet Miller nimbly walks us through the minefield.
If The Equations of Life attempts to provide simple answers to complicated questions, The Human Instinct does the opposite, helping us see just how complicated these questions really are and how divergent the answers could be. These books pair together perfectly because they both strike blows against the prevailing notion that human beings are the most unlikely of species. As Cockell explains, “there is nothing uncanny about life’s ability to land on the same solutions.” While anyone with basic knowledge of biology is aware of the many examples of convergent evolution, Cockell seasons those examples by deriving the mathematical relationships that underlie the convergence. Even if things like building a cell, storing genetic information, and swarming towards food might be easily reduced to physical forces, surely reason and consciousness are in a different realm altogether. Hardly, says Miller. Channeling the eminent paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, among others, Miller aggressively defends the claim that, “It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the appearance of humanlike intelligence is part of the deep structure of nature probed again and again by the evolutionary process.” […]
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