Book review: Life Ascending, by Nick Lane
Originally posted on GoodReads.
A month ago I had no idea who Nick Lane was. Then, in the span of just a few days, I heard two very bright people independently making the same comment: “Nick Lane is great, you should read all his books.” I can see why now.
I went with “Life Ascending” because it seemed like a good place to start, and because its basic premise sounded cool: Lane chooses ten “inventions” of evolution that revolutionized the natural world and discusses each one in a different chapter. These are: life itself, DNA, photosynthesis, the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, hot blood, consciousness, and death. In all cases, the question is the same: how and why did it emerge?
And yet that description doesn’t really capture what makes Life Ascending so special. It’s easy to imagine a plain, fluffy book with those contents, but that’s not the case here at all. To begin with, the explanations are quite hardcore, at least for me. A lot went over my head. It’s still a popular science book, so there’s a lot of simplification, but this is the kind of writing that respects your intelligence and assumes you are willing to put in the hard work.
But the biggest reason this book feels different is this: a significant chunk could easily be proven wrong in ten or twenty years. And that’s a good thing! It means that Lane is discussing questions that are being debated right now (or at least when the book was written; I can’t say what has changed since then). It wouldn’t have been hard to write something that stays within the scientific consensus, which would’ve been a safer but less rewarding bet.
Not only does he discuss things that are on the bleeding edge, he also takes a stand. In most chapters, there are competing answers to the question of how something happened, and Lane is always clear about which explanation he prefers, going into it in much more detail than the rest. One review of the book complains about this, saying that he talks about conjectures as if they were facts. I don’t know how someone can get that impression unless they were half asleep while reading it: to me he’s always very clear about which things are established and which ones are more speculative.
The fact that he takes a side on each debate can be a put-off if you are under the illusion that aiming for objectivity is always better, but that’s nonsense. One of the many things I got from the book is a better picture of what these debates look like, and the best way to get that is to see someone who cares about the discussion and engages with it. A dispassionate explanation of each position would’ve resulted in a boring, weaker book.
The quality is very high overall, although there is significant variance between chapters. Some are absolutely great, like the ones about photosynthesis and sight. Others are less memorable, but still good. My least favorite chapter was the one on hot blood, which almost feels like it was added to round it out to ten. The problem is that it’s not like the rest, which are very focused on the question of how that particular characteristic evolved. There are digressions, but not that many. The chapter on hot blood, on the other hand, spends most of its pages on the question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded. This is apparently one of the more heated debates in paleontology, but I... didn’t care that much. A lot of great stuff there anyway, but it felt off overall.
In summary: this is an ambitious, opinionated (in a good way), and absolutely fantastic book. I definitely want to read all of Nick Lane’s books now.