A Brief History of Creation (46 page)

Redgrove, H. S., and I. M. L. Redgrove.
Joannes Baptista van Helmont: Alchemist, Physician and Philosopher
. London: William Rider & Son, 1922.

Redi, F.
Esperienze intorno a diverse cose naturali, e particolarmente a quelle, che ci son portate dall'Indie
. Naples: Giacomo Raillard, 1687.

Redi, F.
Experiments on the Generation of Insects
. Chicago: Open Court, 1909.

Ridley, M. “Crick and Darwin's Shared Publication in
Nature
.”
Nature
(2004) 244.

Ridley, M.
Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Ridley, M.
Genome
. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006.

Roe, S. “Biology, Atheism, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France.” In
Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins
, edited by D. R. Alexander and R. L. Numbers, 36–60. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Roe, S. “Voltaire versus Needham: Atheism, Materialism, and the Generation of Life.”
Journal of the History of Ideas
46, no.1 (1985): 65–87.

Roger, J.
The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought
. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Rovelli, C.
The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy
. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2007.

Rupke, N.
Richard Owen: Biology without Darwin
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Sapp, J.
The New Foundations of Life
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Sapp, J., and G. E. Fox. “The Singular Quest for a Universal Tree of Life.”
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews
77, no. 4 (2013): 541–50.

Sawyer, K.
The Rock from Mars: A Detective Story on Two Planets
. New York: Random House, 2006.

Schopf, W.
Cradle of Life: The Discovery of Earth's Earliest Fossils
. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

“Science: Semi-Creation.”
Time
, May 25, 1953.

Secord, J. A. “The Curious Case of the
Acarus crossii
.”
Nature
345 (1990): 471–72.

Secord, J. A.
Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Seymour, M.
Mary Shelley
. London: John Murray, 2000.

Shapiro, R.
Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth
. New York: Summit, 1986.

Shea, W. R., and M. Artigas.
Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troubled Genius
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Shelley, M.
Frankenstein
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

“Sidney W. Fox; Analyzed First Moon Rocks.”
Los Angeles Times
, August 18, 1998.

Soloviev, Y. Y. “240th Anniversary of the Birth of Georges Cuvier (1769–1832).”
Paeleontological Journal
44, no. 6 (2010): 107–12.

Stott, R.
Darwin's Ghosts
. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2012.

Strick, J. “Creating a Cosmic Discipline: The Crystallization and Consolidation of Exobiology, 1957–1973.”
Journal of the History of Biology
37 (2004): 131–80.

Strick, J.
Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Debates over Spontaneous Generation
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Thomas, S.
Men of Space: Profiles of Scientists Who Probe for Life in Space
. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1963.

Tresch, J.
The Romantic Machine
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Vallery-Radot, R.
Louis Pasteur—His Life and Labours
. London: Longmans, Green, 1885.

Venter, J. C.
Life at the Speed of Light
. New York: Viking, 2013.

Voltaire.
Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire
, vol. 10. Edited by L. Moland. Paris: Garnier, 1877.

Voltaire.
The Works of Voltaire
. Akron, OH: Werner, 1904.

Voltaire.
The Works of Voltaire
, vol. 33. Paris: A. Firmin Didot, 1829. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30123/30123-h/30123-h.htm#chap04.

Walcott, C. “Pre-Cambrian Rocks of North America.”
Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey
, no. 81 (1891): 594.

Wald, G. “The Origin of Life.”
Scientific American
191, no. 2 (1954): 44–53.

Ward, P.
Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
. New York: Penguin, 2005.

Watson, J. D.
The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.

Watson J. D., and F. H. Crick. “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.”
Nature
171 (1953): 737–38.

Wedgwood, C. V.
The Thirty Years War
. New York: New York Review of Books, 2005.

Whitfield, J. “Origin of Life: Nascence Man.”
Nature
459 (2009): 316–19.

Whittaker, E. T.
A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
. London: Longman, Green, 1910.

Wilson, E. O.
From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin
. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

Woese, C. “Evolving Biological Organization.” In
Microbial Phylogeny and Evolution
, edited by Jan Sapp, 99–118. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Woese, C. R.
The Genetic Code: The Molecular Basis for Genetic Expression
. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
O TELL A STORY
of this scope, we had to draw upon the help and encouragement of countless individuals who provided us with knowledge, insight, and encouragement along the way. Although we have inevitably overlooked some, we'd like to mention a few. Jack Szostak graciously shared his time and opened up his lab at Harvard to prying eyes. George Fox made us laugh with his personal recollections of Carl Woese, too few of which we were able to use. Armen Mulkidjanian of the University Osnabrück helped with research on Alexander Oparin, some of which would have been unavailable to non-Russian speakers. Ron Fox shared personal details about his father, Sidney. Elisa Biondi at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution deserves special praise. By translating for us original source material from Francesco Redi, she went far beyond what we could have reasonably expected.

Merri Wolf and Shawn Hardy of the Geophysical Library of the Carnegie Institution of Washington provided us with access to many hard to find research materials, as only skilled librarians can. We'd also like to thank the Institute for Advanced Studies, without which we would not have been able to access the breadth of Princeton University's library resources.

Gail Ross and Howard Yoon lived up to their reputations as excellent agents. And at Norton, we were lucky enough to cross paths with two wonderful editors—Angela von der Lippe, who believed in this story, and Alane Salierno Mason, whose skill and perserverance made it a reality. Others whose assistance was invaluable include Faye Torresyap, Stephanie Hiebert, and Remy Cawley. And we can't fail to thank our wives, Antje Teegler and
Tracy Wahl, without whom this book would have been impossible. Antje was a diligent and invaluable proofreader, while Tracy provided creative guidance that harnessed years of experience at National Public Radio. Thank you both for putting up with us.

We should point out the obvious fact that neither of us is a historian. The lion's share of the credit for this book is owed to the often underappreciated women and men who have tirelessly preserved the stories of science for posterity. We hope that this book encourages interest in the work of those who have striven to understand not only what we as a society believe, but how and why we came to believe it.

Finally, we'd like to thank those scientists who have devoted and those who continue to devote their lives to humanity's greatest question: How did we get here?

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

INDEX

Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device's search function to locate particular terms in the text.

Note: Page numbers in
italics
refer to illustrations.

abiogenesis (life from nonlife), xvii, 141, 145, 148, 153, 160, 207

Accademia del Cimento (Academy of Experiment), 16, 17, 18, 24, 256

Accademia della Crusca (Academy of Literature), 24

acidophiles, 236

age of reason, 14

agnosticism, 106, 131

agricultural revolution, 148

alchemy, 20

alcohol, and fermentation, 124–26

Aldini, Giovanni, 80

Aldrin, Buzz, 186–90,
190
, 191

Alexander the Great, 9

algae, 271n

ALH84001, 211–16, 218, 219, 220, 221–22

Altman, Sidney, 241–42, 243–44, 245

amino acids:

as building blocks of proteins, 178, 193, 198, 209, 226, 229

creation of, 173, 197

in early cell prototype, 197–98, 208

in meteorites from space, 220–21

amphiphiles, 249

Anaxagoras, 216

Anaximander, 4–5, 19, 81

apeiron
of, 7

cosmology of, 7

elements identified by, 7, 8

On Nature,
6–7, 8

on origin of life, 8, 10

animalcules, 38–41, 58, 59, 70

animal electricity, 79–81

animal magnetism, 84

Antarctic:

and ALH84001 (Mars rock), 211–16

meteorites in, 211

rocks in, 209, 210–19

Transantarctic Mountains, 211

aperiodic crystal, 195

aphasia, 134

Apollo
missions:

experiments of, 244

man on the moon, 185, 186–90,
190

moon rocks from, 189–90, 191, 193

archaebacteria “archaea,” 231–33

archaeology, 163

archebiosis, 134–35, 141

Argo
(marine explorer), xi–xiii, 238

Aristophanes, 81

Aristotle, 8–11, 14, 19, 41, 114

as founder of biology, 10

History of Animals,
10–11

and Lyceum of Athens, 8–9

Physics,
8

on spontaneous generation, 10–11, 13, 18, 20, 133, 134, 141, 144

tree of life, 10

Armstrong, Neil, 186–90, 191