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posted 18. December 2003 16:25
The Way Things Are is the Way Things Have to Be
Review by Marcus Ross
Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
By Simon Conway Morris
Cambridge University Press, 2003
464 pp.
Writing on the heels of his final chapters in Crucible of Creation, Cambridge paleontologist Simon Conway Morris returns to the theme of convergence and its implications for our understanding of evolution in Life’s Solution. Convergence (also called homoplasy in cladistic terminology) is the independent origination of similar traits among distantly related organisms. Life, argues Conway Morris, is replete with examples of convergence on every level. Molecules, cellular structures, macroscopic features, behaviors, and even particular types of intelligence all display convergences. It is the perhaps ubiquity of convergence that offers the most interesting insight into evolution: inevitability.
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