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13 - Protein-based life as an emergent property of matter: the nature and biological fitness of the protein folds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2009

By
Michael J. Denton
Edited by
John D. Barrow ,
Simon Conway Morris ,
Stephen J. Freeland  and
Charles L. Harper, Jr
Michael J. Denton
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan
John D. Barrow
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Simon Conway Morris
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Stephen J. Freeland
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Charles L. Harper, Jr
Affiliation:
John Templeton Foundation
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Summary

The thesis I shall present in this book is that the biosphere does not contain a predictable class of events but is a particular event, certainly compatible indeed with first principles, but not deducible from those principles and therefore essentially unpredictable.

Jacques Monod (1972), Chance and Necessity

The process of crystallization in inorganic nature … is … the nearest analogue to the formation of cells … should we not therefore be justified in putting forward the proposition that the formation of the elementary parts of organisms is nothing but a crystallization and the organism nothing but an aggregate of such crystals?

Theodore Schwann (1847), Microscopical Researches

The laws of light as of gravitation being the same [on other planets] … the inference as to the possibility of the vertebrate type being the basis of organization of some of the inhabitants of other planets will not appear so hazardous.

Richard Owen (1849), On the Nature of Limbs

Introduction

In his great classic The Fitness of the Environment (1913), Lawrence J. Henderson examined the fitness of the basic chemical constituents and chemical processes used by living organisms on earth and of the general environment, including the hydrosphere and atmosphere of the earth, and argued that the laws of nature and the properties of matter appear uniquely and maximally fit for life as it exists on earth.

Type
Chapter
Information
Fitness of the Cosmos for Life
Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning
 , pp. 256 - 279
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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