Seven Clues to the Origin of Life A Scientific Detective Story

Popular Science

Series: Canto (Original Series)

By: AG Cairns-Smith(Author)

240 pages, illustrations

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

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ISBN: 9780521398282 Paperback Sep 1990 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 1-2 weeks
£15.99
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ISBN: 9780521275224 Hardback Aug 1985 Out of Print #4915

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About this book

Seven Clues to the Origin of Life addresses the question of how life may have arisen on earth, in the spirit of an intriguing detective story. It relies on the methods of Sherlock Holmes, in particular his principle that one should use the most paradoxical features of a case to crack it. This approach to the essential biological problems is not merely light-hearted, but a fascinating scrutiny of some very fundamental questions

Preface
Sources of quotations

1. Inquest
2. Messages, messages
3. Build your own E. coli
4. The inner machinery
5. A garden path?
6. Look more closely at the signposts
7. A clue in a Chinese box
8. Missing pieces
9. The trouble with molecules
10. Crystals
11. The clay-making machine
12. Gene-1
13. Evolving by direct action
14. Takeover
15. Summing-up: the seven clues

Appendices
Glossary
Index.

Customer Reviews

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Popular Science

Series: Canto (Original Series)

By: AG Cairns-Smith(Author)

240 pages, illustrations

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Media reviews

"I know of no other book that succeeds as well as this one in maintaining the central question in focus throughout. It is a summary of the best evolutionary thinking as applied to the origins of life in which the important issues are addressed pertinently, economically and with a happy recourse to creative analogies."
- Nature

"[...] a splendid story – and a much more convincing one than the molecular biologists can offer as an alternative. Cairns-Smith has argued his case before in the technical scientific literature, here he sets it out in a way from which anyone – even those whose chemistry and biology stopped at 16 – can learn."
- New Statesman

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