Endurance of life : the implications of genetics for human life / Macfarlane Burnet.

  • Burnet, F. M. (Frank Macfarlane), Sir, 1899-1985.
Date:
1978
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Endurance of life : the implications of genetics for human life / Macfarlane Burnet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 Complexity and Error; the Еглегдепсе of DNA Man—body and mind—is the most interesting and most complex aggregation of atoms in the universe as we know it. Yet the human organism has an evolutionary history that can be followed back with some confidence, despite the gaps, to the very beginning of things. In some way the formless flux of elementary particles and energy that made up the primordial fireball was capable in due course of generating all the complexity and diversity of the world today. The fact that, implicit in the 'Big Bang'—that utterly improbable occur¬ rence with which the universe began—was the potentiality of the emergence of man and of intelligence, provides the least answerable of all philosophic questions. I am not competent to discuss the philosophical side, but I can follow in outline the steps by which the atoms of the elements appeared and were distributed in their observed frequency through the cosmos. The origin of the solar system is relatively well understood as the gravitational concen¬ tration and redistribution of an immense cloud of cosmic material. Each planet took its final form largely in accord with the distance of its orbit from the sun. The earth in the early stage of its formation lost most of the lighter and more volatile substances, and, as it cooled and consoUdated, a second redistribution of its matter liberated a primitive atmosphere and the water that became the oceans and gave origin to life. The significance of error In Chapter 1,1 discussed some aspects of the first stages of life in the upper levels of the seas; here the approach is to the significance of error. In a sense, the whole road to man has been a catalogue of errors. Most of the matter in the universe is still in the form of hydrogen, and only an infinitesimal part of the hydrogen is in the 17