A Brief History of Creation

October 12, 2015
Journalist Mesler and chemist Cleaves explore how humans have contemplated life’s origins over the millennia, and the authors offer a cogent explanation of the best current thinking on the topic in this broad intellectual history. Because they cover so much ground—moving from the Egyptians through the Greeks all the way to the present—they are forced to be somewhat superficial. Nonetheless, across the arc of their engaging story they raise some fascinating points. Throughout, they touch on the controversy between religion and science, such as the way that those in the mid-19th century who attempted to demonstrate that spontaneous generation occurred regularly were seen as anti-Christian materialists. Unsurprisingly, significant time is spent on the work of Charles Darwin, but he is unfairly criticized for not fully addressing the issue of the origin of life—unfair because that was not the question he was attempting to answer. Yet Mesler and Cleaves recognize that Darwin forever transformed the discussion, since after Darwin, “those who once wondered about the first of each species now wondered about a single first ancestor of all of them.” The last chapters take readers on a tour of current research that will both educate and entertain.