Whatever prompted life to begin, it happened just once. That is
the most extraordinary fact in biology, perhaps the most extraordinary
fact we know. Everything that has ever lived, plant or animal,
dates its beginnings from the same primordial twitch. At some
point in an unimaginably distant past some little bag of chemicals
fidgeted to life. It absorbed some nutrients, gently pulsed, had
a brief existence. This much may have happened before, perhaps
many times. But this ancestral packet did something additional
and extraordinary: it cleaved itself and produced an heir.
A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to
another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of
creation for us all. Biologists sometimes call it the Big
Birth.
“As late as 1933 … many researchers still weren’t
convinced that genes even existed. . . . It may seem surprising
that scientists could struggle to accept the physical reality of
something so fundamental to cellular activity, but …. We are in
much the same position today with mental processes such as thought and
memory. We know that we have them, of course, but we don’t know
what, if any, physical form they take. So it was for the longest
time with genes. The idea that you could pluck one from your body
and take it away for study was as absurd . . . as the idea that
scientists today might capture a stray thought and examine it under a
microscope.”
“We are very lucky, it appears, to get any good weather at all.
Even less well understood are the cycles of comparative balminess
within ice ages, known as interglacials. It is mildly unnerving
to reflect that the whole of meaningful human history – the development
of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of mathematics and writing
and science and all the rest—has taken place within an atypical patch
of fair weather. Previous interglacials have lasted as little as
eight thousand years. Our own has already passed its ten
thousandth anniversary.”
“To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be
quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of
course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the
singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to
make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.
We have arrived at this position of eminence in a stunningly short time. Behaviorally modern human beings – that is, people who can speak and make art and organize complex activities – have existed for only about 0.0001 percent of Earth’s history. But surviving for even that little while has required a nearly endless string of good fortune. We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. And that, almost certainly, will require a good deal more than lucky breaks.”
“Art
is more godlike than science.
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