Comments on: Book review – The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution

By: Book review – From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution | The Inquisitive Biologist

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 11:22:50 +0000

[…] I hope that no biologist seriously advocates this: physics has long been recognized as “life’s silent commander“, the concept of fitness landscapes is almost a century old, and I have repeatedly converged […]

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By: Book review – Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 08:56:01 +0000

[…] for life as it is “hands down the best team player on the periodic table” (p. 212). But does physics restrict us to these options, or can we sketch a periodic table of life with other, weirder possibilities? And […]

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By: Book review – The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal about Aliens – and Ourselves | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 16:19:43 +0000

[…] (p. 46). The laws of physics circumscribe a limited set of possibilities, something that Charles Cockell so memorably expressed by writing that “physics is life’s silent […]

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By: Book review – Rates of Evolution: A Quantitative Synthesis | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:04:48 +0000

[…] most of this averages out. One reason he shortly touches on is that of limits. As mentioned in The Equations of Life, “physics is life’s silent commander”. There are limits to e.g. an animal’s […]

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By: Book review – Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 17:30:30 +0000

[…] two chapters. One reason for convergent evolution is constraints imposed by physics – Cockell memorably summarised this with the phrase “physics is life’s silent commander”. The other is developmental […]

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By: Book review – How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems | The Inquisitive Biologist

Sun, 10 May 2020 14:49:20 +0000

[…] think that as a biologist I would have an answer to this. Charles S. Cockell said it nicely in The Equations of Life: “Because physics is life’s silent commander”, and as Munroe deftly explains, it is […]

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By: Book review – How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 15:49:31 +0000

[…] think that as a biologist I would have an answer to this. Charles S. Cockell said it nicely in The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution: “Because physics is life’s silent commander”, and as Munroe deftly explains, it is […]

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By: Book review – Rates of Evolution: A Quantitative Synthesis | The Inquisitive Biologist

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 11:15:25 +0000

[…] this averages out. One reason he shortly touches on is that of limits. As mentioned in my review of The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution, “physics is life’s silent commander”. There are limits to e.g. an animal’s […]

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By: Book review – How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future | The Inquisitive Biologist

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 11:04:44 +0000

[…] Some projects are so well known that multiple authors will write about them, such as the Kilobot robot swarm described by Lisa Margonelli (see my review of Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology). Others are very obscure, so I was not terribly surprised to see no mention of John Long’s evolving robots (see Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology). But, given that Hu has worked at MIT, I was surprised to read nothing about the walking robots from well-known engineering schools such as the MIT Biomimetic Robotics Lab, Boston Dynamics, or Caltech. Their designs for mobile all-terrain robots are (literally) advancing by leaps and bounds, and the footage coming out of these labs of walking, running, jumping, backflipping, door-opening robots is as fascinating as it is terrifying. They regularly make the news, prompting both clickbaity headlines playing at people’s fears, but also serious concerns about how the military will be using these (a lot of this research is sponsored by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense). Instead, Hu features Steve Collins’s passive-dynamic walking robot that only uses gravity as a driving force. And where are the titular wall-climbers in this book? Finally, the book lacks much in the way of a discussion of evolutionary and physical constraints that impose limits on locomotion (see e.g. Evolutionary Biomechanics: Selection, Phylogeny, and Constraint, Feats of Strength: How Evolution Shapes Animal Athletic Abilities, and The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution). […]

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By: Book review – Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 25 Jul 2019 11:38:55 +0000

[…] “why carbon?” This question was also asked by Charles Cockell (see my review of The Equations of Life: The Hidden Rules Shaping Evolution), and Hazen gives a slightly less physics-heavy overview of why carbon’s atomic properties […]

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