Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth

by Robert Shapiro

Book Overview

The Quest To Discover Life Beyond Earth.

The 'dreams' that I write of are not the usual ones, the images that come up in our minds involuntarily during certain stages of sleep, but rather the hopes and expectations that we have lavished upon other worlds around us.-from the Preface.

The surprisingly long history of debate over extraterrestrial life is full of marvelous visions of what life out there might be like, as well as remarkable...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471179361
• ISBN13: 9780471179368
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Rather Good Book

I had this book on my shelf for over a year before I took it down for a read. I thought I might be bored by it, since it is a popular treatment of a subject I know pretty well. But Shapiro brought the subject to life in a rather interesting way, dealing not only with the particular issues asociated with the chemistry of life's origin, but with the deeper philosophical issues that lie behind the debate. I especially liked his illuminating flight of fancy entitled "A Dinner Out of time," which features Frederich Engels, Herbert Spencer, and Teilhard De Chardin (Marxist, libertarian, and Christian exponents of the idea of progress in nature, respectively) at one table, and Jacques Monod, Steven Jay Gould, Fred Hoyle, and William Jennings Bryan (all opposed to the idea) at the other. Shapiro is right on the mark when he asserts that the philosophical bias of the opposing camps has a strong role in directing their interpretations of the data, whether of Earth's history, the Viking results, of the Alan Hills meteorite. He is also right in his thesis stating what the stakes in this apparently abstract controversary actually are. All in all, a fine book.

Fresh and inspiring ideas!

Planetary Dreams is a superb book full of interesting information and ideas. I particularly liked the fresh and inspiring ideas in the last two chapters. Robert Shapiro, a well regarded scientist, is not afraid to express his visions of the future of space exploration along with his solid science.

Reliable science on the probability of life evolving

This is the best book I've read on the "problem" of the evolution of life and its probability throughout the universe. He reviews all of the major theories and gives up-to-date critiques. I concluded that at bottom the only reason for not believing that life is common in the universe is the argument of incredulity: "I can't imagine how life could have evolved, so therefore it must either be exceedingly rare or miraculous." In fact, there's no reason for believing that there is anything especially unusual about our solar system or our planet Earth, so, following the Copernican Principle, life is probably everywhere.

A wonderful discusion of searching for life in the universe.

Reading Planetary Dreams: The Quest to Discover Life Beyond Earth was an exquisite pleasure for me. I couldn't skip forward to the chapters on solar system exploration because I wanted to enjoy every last single word. I have always believed that it was possible to express important scientific ideas so they could be easily understood, but Bob Shapiro has shown how really well it can be done. The different technical areas involved in exploring the planets for life are well explained for the non-specialist. Professor Shapiro has reviewed all the pertinent scientific areas, astronomy, chemistry, biology, computational complexity, and more. And he includes the ideas of an amazing number of authors - Aristotle and Asimov, Bradbury and von Braun, Clarke and Copernicus, Dante and Darwin, and on and on. My initial interest in the book Planetary Dreams was professional. I work at NASA and am involved in Astrobiology, the search for life in the universe. Dr. Robert Shapiro is well known in this area because of his work on understanding the origins of life and developing methods to search for nonterrestrial life. Exotic life in our solar system may not be based on carbon or use water as a solvent. By reading Planetary Dreams, I have gained a better, firmer, clearer, wider understanding of the scientific world view. I can easily imagine a reader having his or her life changed by reading this book. I was so interested in Planetary Dreams that I postponed seeing the new Star Wars movie until after I finished the book. And Planetary Dreams is better entertainment and much better philosophy than the movie, and it indicates a worthy future quest for the human race. I loved every word. Everyone interested in life and the universe should read this book.

A fun read by a fine biochemist.

"Planetary Dreams" is not science fiction. It is a clear-headed, and yet exceptionally entertaining, discussion of the likelihood of life on other worlds and of why space exploration should be an important goal for those of us on earth. Shapiro displays his twin talents as rigorous biochemist and fascinating story-teller. This is an important book for anyone interested in the future of our own species.