 Image — Robert E. Filman |
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comments on the books
“A tour de force. Great breadth and scope of ideas and process models of how thoughts and life emerge and evolve. Fascinating and profoundly thought-provoking. Using the young field of Astrobiology, with its disparate personalities and schools of thought as her case study, Zann Gill tackles the most fundamental question, ‘Where do ideas come from?’ Gill’s heroic integration across disciplines provides unique insight and a valuable fresh perspective on this basic question.”
Louis Allamandola, Research Scientist
Founder / Director of the NASA Ames Astrochemistry Laboratory
Winner of the NASA Presidential Award for Science Achievement 2007.
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science & American Physical Society
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“Zann Gill takes up deep and interwoven topics — the origin of life, the origin of hypotheses and more. What comes up in its grasp is wonderfully written, provocative, and an important book. Do read it.”
Stuart Kauffman, MacArthur Fellow, Director, Institute
for Biocomplexity and Informatics, University of Calgary
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“If Microbes begat Mind provides an interesting, integrated, and unusual presentation of the issues of life’s origin, and evolution, and the parallel development of intelligence and consciousness. Woven through it is a commentary on the scientific process and its analogies to evolution and origins. It includes an important review of intellectual history and philosophy and is a needed addition to the growing field of books in the field that for the most part deal only with biology, chemistry, and physics Although the concepts are sometimes complex, they are explained with many examples and with a rich sampling of ‘hard science’ research. It supports the intellectual arguments for engaging in this research that supplement the many scientific, engineering, and applied outcomes that make the field so engaging. It is an important read for both beginners and advanced scientists and scholars in the fields of biology, evolution, astrobiology, history of science, and human affairs.”
Baruch Blumberg, Nobel laureate, Fox Chase Cancer Center
Former Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute
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“Biologists generally have not thought very deeply about what design means and how it works, largely because we are trained to believe there is no such thing, that ‘well-designed’ creatures are simply the product of selection of ‘good-function’ genes. Problem solved. We biologists could learn a thing or two, though, by listening to someone who has thought carefully about the process of design. In If Microbes begat Mind and What Daedalus told Darwin Zann Gill engages us in an extended meditation on the process of design, and what it means for our understanding of life’s designs, its evolutions and its origins. Her book thoughtfully weaves many disparate threads into a fascinating tapestry that casts decades, even centuries of accumulated conventional wisdom about design into a challenging new light.”
Scott Turner, author, The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself & The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures
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“Zann Gill weaves her hypothesis from the metaphorical Gordian knot in a unique way. Much as a CAT scan cuts through the complex anatomy of the human body, Gill uses single powerful concepts as hyperplanes that cut through the complexities of microbes and mind. The reader sees individual strands of the knot as they emerge into each plane, but must in the end integrate multiple planes to comprehend the three-dimensional whole of the knot.”
David Deamer, Origin of Life Theorist, Research Professor, Biomolecular Engineering, UC Santa Cruz
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“Zann Gill’s exploration of creativity — biochemical, evolutionary, and human — is appropriately creative and original itself. A bravura performance.”
John Horgan, author, The End of Science and Rational Mysticism
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“Very good — intriguing presentation of the mesh principle. Hofstadter was also concerned with Gödel and undecidability. If GAIA is valid, and life adapts the world, and if Zann Gill is correct that an interacting network of relationships is responsible for the origin of life, then a mathematical representation of such a world would have to include undecidable statements, probably those that are self-referential. . . the paradoxes usually occur there. This may be why we encounter such difficulties when we try to identify the differences between life and non-life. The fact that we (life) are trying to state something definitive about our own condition (alive or not alive) may result in even more than a Gordian knot — a Gödelian knot!”
Bill McDaniel, Director of the Applied Innovations stream at Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), National University of Ireland, Galway; formerly Senior Scientist, Adobe Systems Inc.
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“Zann Gill’s book, What Daedalus told Darwin reminds us that reality isn’t what we think it is — that our most important challenge of the 21st century is: Can we develop satisfying ways to think of ourselves and our place in a universe in which we are both acted on by continuous change and are ourselves contributors to that change? This valuable and distinctive contribution to a developing literature addressing that challenge lays out principles applicable to physical, biological, intellectual, and social change.”
Paul Grobstein, Eleanor A. Bliss Professor of Biology
Director, Center for Science in Society, Bryn Mawr College
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“Zann Gill has given us a strong network of ideas and arguments about life and thinking, and thinking about life — from the enigma of the origin of life to the origins of hypotheses about it.”
Graham Cairns-Smith, author of Genetic Takeover, Seven Clues to the Origin of Life & Evolving the Mind: on the nature of matter & origin of consciousness
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“Zann Gill weaves a web of questions and hypotheses that is bound to stimulate and challenge any thinker concerned with the most profound open issues of our time: the origins and evolution of life, the nature of intelligence and consciousness, and an understanding of problem-solving behavior, both in humans and in artificial systems.”
Silvano Colombano, Biophysicist and Computer Scientist, NASA Ames Research Center, Organizer and Chair of "Robosphere"
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“Zann Gill’s insightful and thorough investigation draws on the author’s extensive research and interviews. If Microbes begat Mind will appeal to those interested in the origin of life as a current interdisciplinary problem in modern science and in how we can bring our best creative and scientific talents to bear on the pressing issues of today.”
Chris McKay, Research Scientist
NASA Missions to the Moon, Mars, Europa, Titan
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“A lively, provocative romp through some of the most fascinating scientific and philosophical terrain being explored today — what life is, how it arises, and its intrinsic connection to the mind.”
Mark Bedau, Editor-in-Chief, Artificial Life (MIT Press Journal)
Co-Founder of the European Center for Living Technologies)
Professor of Philosophy of Science, Reed College
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