Summary of Chapter 6 – “Who Is the Earth?”

Once cooperation had evolved the first cell there were apparently metabolic processes inside of it that could not simply keep getting bigger. Instead, the growing cell divided, and then kept on dividing. There were few limits in the early ocean. Two questions are...

Summary of Chapter 5 – “Who Is the Earth?”

  How does cooperation work in the creation of the first cell? We go into the molecules of water itself to find a place where this process may have begun. In the traditional view, molecules of water can be tightly organized in ice, loosely collected in liquid...

Summary of Chapter 4 – “Who Is the Earth?”

This chapter focuses on the idea of cooperation and looks at examples in the “nonliving” world, before beginning to talk about the self-generating systems from which life arose. An important function of cooperation is that it creates a new, quite real, entity out of...

Summary of Chapter 3 – “Who Is the Earth?”

Although compounds of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen can be found in the large molecular clouds that are the nurseries for solar systems, it is a long, long journey from them to even the simplest kinds of life. The simple bacterium is thought to be one of the first...