Philosophy and science

The nature of life: classical and contemporary perspectives from philosophy and science 

Mark A Bedau and Carol E Cleland (eds) 

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2010 |440pp |?75 (HB)

ISBN 9780521517751

Reviewed by Graham Cairns-Smith

Attempts to agree a definition of life can make for a quagmire of endless argument and counter-argument. There is a bit of that here, but mainly The nature of life is a well organised compilation of wise words and intriguing possibilities (in 31 chapters) from Aristotle to Dawkins. 

One of the best pieces is by (co-editor) Carol Cleland with Christopher Chyba. They use science and philosophy to answer a blunt question: ’Does life have a definition?’ They come to a clear answer: No! Quagmire dispelled? Possibly. I am reminded of N W Pirie’s similar mega-denial in an essay of 1937 under the title On the meaninglessness of the terms ’life’ and ’living’.¹ If we add to that Dobzhansky’s famous aphorism ’Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’, then we may come to see evolution, not life, as the central idea of biology. 

In the context of the origin of life, I have had little appetite for a primordial soup of current biochemicals as a necessary precursor for evolving systems. So I am pleased to see the recent interest in possible alternative biochemistries that might be found or made. 

This all broadens the mind. And it helps us to question the na?ve assumption, dignified as ’the principle of continuity’, which insists that evolvers must always have a similar underlying chemistry to now. Like the geological principle of uniformitarianism this is not a law of nature. Rather, it is an uncertain rule of thumb. We should heed the saying of Francis Bacon (1620) that ’a poor and unskilful use of words incredibly obstructs the understanding’.