Table of Contents

Preface; Sources of quotations; 1. Inquest; 2. Messages, messages; 3. Build your own E. coli; 4. The inner machinery; 5. A garden path?; 6. Look more closely at the signposts; 7. A clue in a Chinese box; 8. Missing pieces; 9. The trouble with molecules; 10. Crystals; 11. The clay-making machine; 12. Gene-1; 13. Evolving by direct action; 14. Takeover; 15. Summing-up: the seven clues; Appendices; Glossary; Index.

Promotional Information

This book addresses the question of how life may have arisen on earth, in the spirit of an intriguing detective story.

Reviews

'I know of no other book that succeeds as well as this one in maintaining the central question in focus throughout. It is a summary of the best evolutionary thinking as applied to the origins of life in which the important issues are addressed pertinently, economically and with a happy recourse to creative analogies.' Nature '... a splendid story - and a much more convincing one than the molecular biologists can offer as an alternative. Cairns-Smith has argued his case before in the technical scientific literature, here he sets it out in a way from which anyone - even those whose chemistry and biology stopped at 16 - can learn.' New Statesman