The Vital Question

The Vital Question is a book by the English biochemist Nick Lane about the way the evolution and origin of life on Earth was constrained by the provision of energy. The book was well received by critics; The New York Times, for example, found it "seductive and often convincing" though the reviewer considered much of it speculative beyond the evidence provided. The Guardian wrote that the book presented hard evidence and tightly interlocking theory on a question once thought inaccessible to science, the origin of life. New Scientist found the book's arguments powerful and persuasive with many testable ideas; that it was not easy to read was compensated by the "incredible, epic story" that it told. The Telegraph wrote that the book succeeded brilliantly as science writing, expanding the reader's horizons with a gripping narrative. Context Early theories of the origin of life included spontaneous generation from non-living matter and panspermia, the arrival of life on earth from other bodies in space. The question of how life originated became urgent when Charles Darwin's 1859 On the Origin of Species became widely accepted by biologists. The evolution of new species by splitting off from older ones implied that all life forms were derived from a few such forms, perhaps only one, as Darwin had suggested at the end of his book. Darwin suggested that life could have originated in some "warm little pond" containing a suitable mixture of chemical compounds. The question has continued to be debated into the 21st century.