THE WONDER OF LIFE

A concise history of our extraordinary arc from mere survival to scientific understanding.

Husher assumes a breathtakingly ambitious task—to explain the emergence of life and the subsequent attempt to comprehend it in under 300 pages—all delivered in prose accessible to the “average layman.” His focus is humans’ steep “learning curve,” the “long and torturous journey forward from this crude and ignorant beginning” to the rational explication of the “secrets of life.” The story begins at the beginning—the genesis of Earth—and chronicles the improbable conditions necessary, chiefly the availability of free oxygen, for life, and in particular human life, to emerge. The collective maturation from original oblivion to scientific knowledge came through a series of “transformation battles”—self-inflicted catastrophes, like war, and natural ones, like disease, compelled us to think and invent. The results were three great innovations that catalyzed the progress of the human race: the alphabet, the printing press, and the advent of the microscope, the last of which introduced scientists to the world of the materially real but generally unseen. Humankind’s rational triumphs, as the author sees it, are the products of vices overcome and a penchant for self-revision. “One of man’s main strengths came from his failings—learning from when he did something that didn’t perform as he expected and making sure he noted this and took another direction the next time it came up.” Husher’s book simply tries to cover too much ground—any monograph, especially a relatively brief one, that covers both Aristotle and the black plague will have to suffer from its abridgments. However, he succeeds in poignantly capturing not only technical advancements, but also the “wonder” and “miracle” of it all. Further, he furnishes a splendidly lucid account of complex topics like DNA.

A thoughtful, rigorous history and celebration of the development of rationality.