Emergence of Life on Earth

A Historical and Scientific Overview

Iris Fry (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

344 Seiten

2000
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8135-2740-6 (ISBN)

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How did life emerge on Earth? Is there life on other worlds? These questions are now the subject of legitimate scientific research. This book presents a unique perspective - a combined historical, scientific, and philosophical anaylsis, which does justice to the complex nature of the subject.

How did life emerge on Earth? Is there life on other worlds? These questions, until recently confined to the pages of speculative essays and tabloid headlines, are now the subject of legitimate scientific research. This book presents a unique perspective--a combined historical, scientific, and philosophical analysis, which does justice to the complex nature of the subject. The book's first part offers an overview of the main ideas on the origin of life as they developed from antiquity until the twentieth century. The second, more detailed part of the book examines contemporary theories and major debates within the origin-of-life scientific community.
Topics include:

Aristotle and the Greek atomists' conceptions of the organism
Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane's 1920s breakthrough papers
Possible life on Mars?

IRIS FRY teaches at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, and in the department of humanities and arts at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Her book The Origin of Life: Mystery or Scientific Problem? was published in Israel in 1997.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. "From the Dust of the Ground"
2. Spontaneous Generation--Ups and Downs
3. The Revival of the Belief in Spontaneous Generation
4. Louis Pasteur--the Deathblow to Spontaneous Generation
5. Between Pasteur and Darwin--A Dead End
6. The Oparin-Haldane Hypothesis
7. An Era of Optimism
8. Evolution in a Test Tube
9. Manfred Eigen's Model
10. Crisis--Real or Fictitious?
11. The RNA World--A Case for Renewed Optimism?
12. And Yet, Metabolism
13. The Emergence of Life--Neither By Chance Nor By Design
14. "Life on Mars? So What?"
Bibliography
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	30.7.2002
Verlagsort	New Brunswick NJ
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	481 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Evolution
ISBN-10	0-8135-2740-6 / 0813527406
ISBN-13	978-0-8135-2740-6 / 9780813527406
Zustand	Neuware