River Out Of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
- Kategoria:
- popularnonaukowa
- Tytuł oryginału:
- River Out Of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
- Wydawnictwo:
- Phoenix
- Data wydania:
- 2004-01-01
- Data 1. wydania:
- 2004-01-01
- Liczba stron:
- 192
- Czas czytania
- 3 godz. 12 min.
- Język:
- angielski
- ISBN:
- 1857994051
The river of Dawkins"s title is a river of DNA, flowing through time from the beginning of life on earth to the present - and onwards. Dawkins explains that DNA must be thought of as the most sophisticated information system imaginable: "Life is just bytes and bytes of information," he writes. Using this perspective, he describes the mechanisms by which evolution has taken place, gradually but inexorably, over a period of three thousand million years. It is the story of how evolution happens, rather than a narrative of what has actually happened in evolution. He discusses current views on the process of human evolution, including the idea that we all trace back to a comparatively recent African "Eve", and speculates that the "information explosion" that was unleashed on Earth when DNA came into being has almost certainly happened in other places in the universe.