|
How did life arise out of inanimate matter?
How and why did living organisms become
progressively more complex in the course of evolution?
In Energy and the Evolution of Life,
Ronald Fox proposes provocative answers to these widely
debated questions. His thesis is that the flow of energy
through matter was the impetus for the origin of life and
for the complexity of its continuing evolution. His compelling
argument is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on ideas
from chemistry, biology, physics, and mathematics.
Fox's central theme is that the basis of
evolution and of life itself is the utilization and storage
of energy. In order for self-reproducing molecular aggregates
to arise from inanimate matter, there must have occurred
a change in the flow of energy through matter. Similarly,
evolutionary changes -- new kinds of biological organization
-- result from ways of storing and using energy. Fox traces
the effects of changes in energy flow from the origin of
elements in the interiors of massive stars to simple chemical
structures to macromolecules to the origin of nervous tissue
in chordates. He suggests that even cultural evolution can
plausibly be viewed as a continuation of the same process.
Ronald Fox's views are innovative and far-reaching,
with implications for the genetic code and the mechanism
of evolution itself. His style is clear and methodical.
And his extensive scholarship encompasses widely diverse
realms of knowledge -- from the provocative logic of the
ancient Greek myth of the uroboros, the self-begetting serpent,
to the complexities of modern physics. Energy and the
Evolution of Life is important and exciting reading
for scientists and students interested in biology's most
controversial questions -- questions of origin. It is must
reading for those who want a foretaste of future research
and debate in this fascinating field.
Ronald F. Fox is a professor of physics
at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his
Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University, where he studied
advanced thermodynamics under George Uhlenbeck and Mark
Kac and developed his knowledge of molecular biology and
bioenergetics through his exposure to Fritz Lipmann and
Christian de Duve. Over the past twenty years Ronald Fox
has published more than sixty papers concerning the application
of stochastic processes to problems in physics and biophysics.
In 1984 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue the
research which culminated in Energy and the Evolution
of Life. He is also the author of Biological Energy
Transduction: The Uroboros. His fascination with the
origins of life began as a child, when he made regular visits
to the laboratory of his father, Sidney Fox, a respected
scientist and author.
|
