Starting your book blurb by asking why gazelles have legs rather than wheels is a suitably out-there question to immediately grab a reader’s attention. A more pertinent question then; why is all life based on carbon rather than silicon? In The Equations of Life, Charles Cockell takes the reader on a giddy tour down the organisational hierarchy of life – from sociobiology to subatomic particles – to show that nature is far more predictable and understandable than it might appear at first blush. His eloquent answer to above and other why questions? “Because physics is life’s silent commander”.
Stephen Jay Gould
Book review – Improbable Destinies: How Predictable is Evolution?
Convergent evolution is a thing of beauty. Whether it is wings in bats, birds and pterosaurs, or eyes in a range of organisms, evolution often seems to come up with functionally similar solutions to life’s challenges. So how predictable is evolution? This is a question that has fascinated generations of biologists and, as Losos quickly makes clear, two famous figures loom large.
The Inquisitive Biologist