Product Description

Half a century ago, before the discovery of DNA, the Austrian physicist and philosopher Erwin Schrdinger inspired a generation of scientists by rephrasing the fascinating philosophical question: What is life? Using their expansive understanding of recent science to wonderful effect, acclaimed authors Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan revisit this timeless question in a fast-moving, wide-ranging narrative that combines rigorous science with philosophy, history, and poetry. The authors move deftly across a dazzling array of topics-from the dynamics of the bacterial realm, to the connection between sex and death, to theories of spirit and matter. They delve into the origins of life, offering the startling suggestion that life-not just human life-is free to act and has played an unexpectedly large part in its own evolution. Transcending the various formal concepts of life, this captivating book offers a unique overview of life's history, essences, and future.

Supplementing the text are stunning illustrations that range from the smallest known organism (Mycoplasma bacteria) to the largest (the biosphere itself). Creatures both strange and familiar enhance the pages of What Is Life? Their existence prompts readers to reconsider preconceptions not only about life but also about their own part in it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #256119 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 303 pages

From Publishers Weekly
There is much art as well as science in this beautifully illustrated treatment of topics relating to the genesis, organization and diversity of life forms on Earth. Margulis, a well-known professor of botany at the University of Massachusetts, and her son, Sagan, who previously collaborated on other works (Origins of Sex; Microcosmos) present a wide-ranging compendium that samples key facets of biology in conjunction with philosophic ideas and historical perspectives. The volume is configured for browsing. Numerous color photographs and charts convey a sense of wonder. While hugely informative, the text itself tends to the lyrical, sometimes lapsing into disconcerting private language. The issues emphasized reflect the authors' sympathy for a less dogmatically mechanistic and more phenomenological overview of what constitutes life, as exemplified by the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the whole earth is a unified living organism. Library of Science, Natural Science, Astronomy and Reader's Subscription book clubs alternates.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
To the question, what is life?, world renowned biologist Margulis and science writer Sagan (her coauthor on Mystery Dance, LJ 7/91, and her son) respond: Life is matter that chooses. Mammalian cells are descended from the amalgamation of different strains of ancient bacteria. All life is connected to us through time and space. Species of organisms diverge into new kinds, yet earlier patterns never entirely disappear. Every species of plant, animal, and fungus perishes, and similar new taxa evolve from them or their kind. The human species may eventually disappear, but something else will evolve from our kind. We learn that we are not the only creative and original creatures but part of a global aggregation. Yet while we are not the only species to make evolutionary choices, we are the ones whose choices will make a difference as to what type of planetary ecosystem we leave for those species that follow. Beautifully executed with numerous photos and illustrations, this thought-provoking work is recommended for general readers and informed lay readers.?Gloria Maxwell, Kansas City P.L., Kan.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In a lusciously illustrated format, a noted microbiologist and her son give multifaceted answers to the title's question. Essentially, any given cell is a window to the past through which Margulis and her scientific colleagues can view early environmental conditions. The initial chapters describe what life is at its most minimal--a self-organizing, self-preserving, and self-reproducing system of matter--then the authors move into the major division of living beings: bacteria, and everything else, termed eukaryotes. How the "everything else" came about, begetting increasing levels of cellular then multicellular order, stemmed from the odd symbiotic results of microbe swallowing microbe. To reinforce their exuberant narrative of that teeming scene, the authors conclude each topic with a pithy, eye-grabbing definition of life. Chapters on the animal, fungus, and plant kingdoms wind up this colorful volume. An informative focus on the microscopic that is richly compatible with the macroscopic paleobiology of Stephen Jay Gould's Book of Life (1993); libraries having both books deliver patrons a one-two punch. Gilbert Taylor

Customer Reviews

This is a luscious book.
The two reviews of "What Is Life" by Kirkus Reviews and Gerard Le Blond were disappointing in their negative tone. Having just read "What Is Life", I found myself wondering what these reviewers brought to the book they so casually dismissed. The author of the Kirkus review is a professional reviewer of books, probably with little appreciation of biology or evolution. His dismay that viruses were not included in the discussion is without merit. Viruses are parasites that cannot reproduce without a living host. They are marginal at best to the question at hand. An author writing on the nature of computers would not find it necessary to spend time on computer viruses. The further criticism that only two vertebrates were included among the pictures reflects the author's parochial viewpoint. This decision should be applauded so that more pictures of a wider variety of life could be included. The pen and ink renderings by Christie Lyons were exceptional. Anyone who wants to look at bushbabys and cheetahs can consult National Geographic or any children's animal encyclopedia.

The quote "knock up against each other and work things out." is used by the reviewer to knock down Margulis and Sagan's book. This line is taken from the last half of the first sentence in a five sentence summary of chapter six. These chapter summaries are intended to be playful and poetic, not dry and lifeless remarks. The implication that tough-minded biologists would laugh at this book is nonsense and should be completely dispelled by Niles Eldrege's forward.

The Gaia theory does permeate the book at many levels. The theory is controversial, but Margulis has not been one to shrink from biological controversies. Her symbiotic theories of the origins of mitochondria and chloroplasts were also controversial when she put them forward, however, she was right then and she may be right now. I would not find much fault with her support of the Gaia theory even if it is not elevated to textbook status. To take a specific example, the suggestion that coccolithophorid algal blooms generate dimethyl sulfide and this causes cloud cover to form and cool the planet has not been supported by satellite observations reported this year. Yet, the Gaia hypothesis is greater than this one example, and there is something to be said for backing an idea if you think it is worthy.

The final blow in the Kirkus review is that few readers would persevere through the whole text. This is hardly relevant to the quality of the book, but more to the quality of the reader. There are many books that are highly praised, yet are seldom read from cover to cover. One that comes to mind is Godel, Escher, Bach, an Eternal Golden Braid, winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. How many of us have started that book, only to become stalled part way through?

As a biochemist with an interest in evolution, I found this book to be fascinating. The examples are fresh. I had never heard of the Rio Tinto in Spain, with its unusual fungi. I did know about the 37 acre fungal clone in Michigan, but I did not know about the quaking aspen forest with 47,000 trunks that is a single organism, probably the largest on earth. One does not have to read far into this book to realize the breadth and depth of knowledge relevant to life's history. Trichoplax, a living minimalist animal is presented as a glimpse of what the first animals might have been like. Thermoplasma acidophilum, an archeabacterium with histones (found almost exclusively in eukaryotes) suggests we need to consider the ancestors of these types of bacteria as precursors of modern eukaryotes.

One area that is particularly strong in this book is the early history of life. A 10 page timeline scrolls across the top of Chapter 3, giving one of the most detailed summaries of important events in life's progression. Margulis is of course the authority on symbiosis of cells to generate more complex life forms, and Chapter 5 on this subject is one of the best in the book. If you are looking for answers to some mystical or metaphysical notion about life, or if you want a quick definition, do not read this book! If you want to gain some insight about life from an expert in the field, then read What is Life. This is a luscious book.

David R. Nelson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of Biochemistry University of Tennessee, Memphis

Beyond biology
I was as enthralled as other reviewers with the amazing facts in this book. My favorite: bacteria don't age; they can die from accidental causes but "programmed death" started with eukaryotes. The authors show that death is necessary for organisms (like us) that practice meiotic cell division.

But this book is far more than a random collection of facts. Margulis and her collaborators do an amazing job of assembling an understandable model of life using parts carefully selected from a vast body of biological knowledge. While a one-sentence definition is still elusive, the reader builds up a picture of life's most pertinent characteristics, as exhibited by the truly astounding diversity of living things on this planet. By the time I finished, I was satisfied that the authors had answered the question.

You don't need to be a biologist to understand and enjoy this book. Its beauty is that the greatest scientific thinking on the most complex topics has been presented in common english, with necessary scientific terms explained as they are introduced. If you are intrigued by the question of life, I doubt there's a more complete, accurate, understandable, and enjoyable answer available than this book.

So you thought you knew biology!
This book is an eye opener and a mind expander. As a science book for the general reader, I give it four stars; this is because Lynn Margulis is a maverick within biology today, and not all that she says is generally accepted science, and because its basic organizational principle, the division of living organisms into five kingdoms, is somewhat out of date. (Since the book came out in 1995, genetic data has made kingdoms subservient to the three "domains" of archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes.) For those with a more extensive background in biology, give it five stars for its capacity to open up broad new perspectives and to offer illuminating new details.

Lynn Margulis does not serve up any final answer to her title's question. There are a couple of ongoing themes: that wherever there is life, there is what she calls "autopoiesis", the definition of a boundary between self and other, together with the absorption and expenditure of free energy to maintain the self. (A process, as she notes, which not only doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics, but actually accelerates the rate at which overall entropy increases.) A second theme is, that life's self-organization goes on at progressively higher levels of integration: from cells to colonies and to symbiotic unions that make one complex cell out of several; from complex cells to multicellular animals, plants, and fungi; from multicellular beings to societies and ecosystems; from ecosystems to the biosphere. Margulis believes that biology impoverishes itself by insisting, as Steven Jay Gould does, that evolution has no "direction," simply because no master designer is imposing a direction on it from outside.

But ultimately, according to Margulis, life can't be defined because it keeps on defining itself, and coming up with new definitions. It is better to step back from our skewed view of primates and vertebrates as the most typical living beings, and look at the broad range of specific ways of being alive that evolution and symbiosis have produced so far. So her book is largely organized into chapters describing the history and nature of each of the five kingdoms, in chronological order: bacteria, protoctists (single celled organisms with nuclei), animals, fungi, and plants.

Did you know that it takes two eggs and three sperm to make a flowering plant? That the cell walls of fungi are made from the same material as lobster skin? That photosynthesis evolved independently several times among bacteria?

As stimulating as the book's parade of facts about the wild profusion of ways of being alive is its parade of speculations: that cilia and flagella are the remnants of spirochete bacteria which took up residence in other cells; that the first fertilization event was the result of a failed attempt at cannibalism; that species-jumping genes from fungi taught flowering plants how to make fruit. Another startling hypothesis surfaces every few pages. Some of these speculations are seriously defended, some are tossed out for what they're worth, but they're all fascinating.

I do wish the footnotes had been more extensive. It would be good, for example, to read up on Kwang Jeon's ameba experiments, in which those amebas that didn't die of a bacterial infection wound up incorporating the bacterial genes - and after a few years of lab reproduction, became unable to survive without them. That experiment is the most vivid support Margulis gives for her thesis that genetic material continues to be regularly exchanged across kingdom boundaries; but it's not among the items for which she chose to provide citations.