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A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You
Fascinating and exhilarating--Sean B. Carroll at his very best.--Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants
From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world
Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things--any of which might never have occurred--had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death.
This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.
From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world
Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things--any of which might never have occurred--had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death.
This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published October 6, 2020
215 people are currently reading
2019 people want to read
About the author
Sean B. Carroll
28 books295 followersSean B. Carroll (born September 17, 1960) is a professor of molecular biology, genetics, and medical genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He studies the evolution of cis-regulation in the context of biological development, using Drosophila as a model system. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Since 2010, he has been vice-president for science education of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
November 2, 2020
The book jacket for Sean Carroll’s A Series of Fortunate Events says this is the “story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world.” So, I assumed the book, like other books about probability, would explore our inability to understand chance, for instance, our belief we can win the lottery jackpot or our misuse of statistically small sample sizes in sports. Although Carroll mentions some of the usual examples, he tackles grander issues like the chance of a large asteroid hitting the earth and the role of chance in evolution. And ultimately, Carroll aims even higher, showing how chance affects who we are and why we are here.
Carroll’s tale is a bumpy ride, lots of positives mixed with some negatives.
First the positives: Carroll begins chapters with fascinating anecdotes, hooks to draw the reader into his story. Who can resist learning about the park ranger hit multiple times by lightning over his lifetime…the roulette wheel that came up black 26 times in a row…or the golfer who (supposedly) recorded five holes-in-one in a round of golf?
But it’s Carroll’s larger story that’s the real positive here. He tells us it’s chance that an asteroid destroyed life on earth so humans could ultimately exist and then thrive; it’s chance that shapes natural selection; and it’s chance that affects when each of us will die. Carroll’s tale is heady, big-picture stuff, well organized, and persuasively told.
That said, there are negatives. Though Carroll pauses to provide summaries from time to time, I occasionally became lost in his detailed explanations, not sure where the book was going. And those detailed explanations were sometimes too long and too complicated for me to follow. Take the explanation of DNA as an example. Though Carroll proceeds step-by-step and includes numerous illustrations, the DNA section at times confused more than enlightened.
Overall, A Series of Fortunate Events left me more educated than confused, more a believer than a doubter, and more positive than negative. However, I will say: Reader beware. Though you’re in for a worthwhile, challenging, thought-provoking ride, expect some turbulence along the way.
One note. For those who believe in a divine maker guiding the universe, you’ll be in for much more than a bumpy ride. Carroll believes chance rules the universe, not divine providence, and he emphasizes that point often. If you believe in a divine entity (say a “watchmaker” guiding mankind’s creation and destiny), prepare to be disappointed or even outraged by this book.
Carroll’s tale is a bumpy ride, lots of positives mixed with some negatives.
First the positives: Carroll begins chapters with fascinating anecdotes, hooks to draw the reader into his story. Who can resist learning about the park ranger hit multiple times by lightning over his lifetime…the roulette wheel that came up black 26 times in a row…or the golfer who (supposedly) recorded five holes-in-one in a round of golf?
But it’s Carroll’s larger story that’s the real positive here. He tells us it’s chance that an asteroid destroyed life on earth so humans could ultimately exist and then thrive; it’s chance that shapes natural selection; and it’s chance that affects when each of us will die. Carroll’s tale is heady, big-picture stuff, well organized, and persuasively told.
That said, there are negatives. Though Carroll pauses to provide summaries from time to time, I occasionally became lost in his detailed explanations, not sure where the book was going. And those detailed explanations were sometimes too long and too complicated for me to follow. Take the explanation of DNA as an example. Though Carroll proceeds step-by-step and includes numerous illustrations, the DNA section at times confused more than enlightened.
Overall, A Series of Fortunate Events left me more educated than confused, more a believer than a doubter, and more positive than negative. However, I will say: Reader beware. Though you’re in for a worthwhile, challenging, thought-provoking ride, expect some turbulence along the way.
One note. For those who believe in a divine maker guiding the universe, you’ll be in for much more than a bumpy ride. Carroll believes chance rules the universe, not divine providence, and he emphasizes that point often. If you believe in a divine entity (say a “watchmaker” guiding mankind’s creation and destiny), prepare to be disappointed or even outraged by this book.
October 18, 2022
Czy przypadek to największa siła działająca we wszechświecie? Wszak to właśnie fart sprawia, że człowiek wygrywa na loterii, i wreszcie może powiedzieć szefowi w twarz co o nim myśli, oczywiście uprzednio rzucając w kadrach wypowiedzenie na stół, również przypadek sprawia, że opuszczając po raz ostatni swoje, byłe już miejsce pracy, ten sam człowiek zostaje śmiertelnie potrącony przez samochód, przechodząc przez pasy na zielonym świetle, przy czym umówmy się – ta druga sytuacja jest niestety o wiele bardziej prawdopodobna.
No dobrze, a jakie jest prawdopodobieństwo, że asteroida o średnicy 10 km uderzy w Ziemię, kończąc tym samym geologiczny okres kredy, przy okazji niosąc Apokalipsę dinozaurom? Między innymi na to pytanie w „Serii fortunnych zdarzeń – Roli przypadku w procesie powstawania, planety, życia oraz ciebie” stara się odpowiedzieć Sean B. Carrol.
Zacznijmy od okładki, bo książeczka - liczy sobie wraz z przypisami i bibliografią zaledwie 240 stron - jest bardzo atrakcyjnie wydana, kolorowa twarda oprawa, bieluteńkie, grube kartki oraz moc rycin sprawiają, że samo trzymanie „Serii…”w dłoniach daje dużo satysfakcji, do czego zresztą wydawnictwo Zysk zdążyło już czytelników przyzwyczaić. O urokliwości (świetna jest ta okładka z komiksowymi asteroidami) wydania nie wspominam bez powodu, ponieważ ta atrakcyjność idealnie koresponduje ze sposobem pisania autora i powinna zainteresować młodszego czytelnika, bo według mnie właśnie dla nastolatków ta książka została napisana.
Sean B. Carrol pisze bardzo lekko, ale co najważniejsze z sensem. Nie stroni od nerdowskich żartów, czasem nawet zdarza mu się rzucić jakimś nie za mocnym bluzgiem. Przykłady „życia wzięte”, jakimi ilustruje zagadnienia poruszane w poszczególnych rozdziałach, są frapujące i dodatkowo pokazują moc przypadku w naszym codziennym życiu, ale Carrol bryluje nie tylko w śmieszkowaniu i ciekawostkach. Z równą łatwością cytuje Ricky’ego Gervais’a, co Jacques’a Monoda, zresztą ten drugi – biolog, noblista z 1956 roku – jest głównym autorytetem przywoływanym przez autora, a niemal 40 z 240 stron „Serii…” to przypisy oraz spis literatury uzupełniającej. Książka składa się z siedmiu rozdziałów podzielonych na trzy części, które dotyczą, jak wskazuje podtytuł: roli przypadku w procesie powstawania planety (wspomniana asteroida), życia (ewolucja) oraz ciebie (dziedziczenie i DNA), część zasadnicza jest poprzedzona solidnym wstępem, kończy ją bardzo interesująco pomyślane posłowie
Sean B. Carrol napisał książkę jakich na naszym rynku wydawniczym brakuje, z jednej strony lekkiej i przyjemnej w odbiorze, z drugiej merytorycznie wartościowej, ale co najważniejsze, na tyle krótkiej, aby nie znudzić czytelnika. Myślę, że idealnie sprawdzi się jako lektura dla nastolatka, chociaż nie tylko, bo sam – nieuchronnie dobijający do bram wieku średniego – świetnie bawiłem się podczas czytania.
Za możliwość przeczytania książki serdecznie dziękuję Klubowi recenzenta portalu nakanapie.pl
No dobrze, a jakie jest prawdopodobieństwo, że asteroida o średnicy 10 km uderzy w Ziemię, kończąc tym samym geologiczny okres kredy, przy okazji niosąc Apokalipsę dinozaurom? Między innymi na to pytanie w „Serii fortunnych zdarzeń – Roli przypadku w procesie powstawania, planety, życia oraz ciebie” stara się odpowiedzieć Sean B. Carrol.
Zacznijmy od okładki, bo książeczka - liczy sobie wraz z przypisami i bibliografią zaledwie 240 stron - jest bardzo atrakcyjnie wydana, kolorowa twarda oprawa, bieluteńkie, grube kartki oraz moc rycin sprawiają, że samo trzymanie „Serii…”w dłoniach daje dużo satysfakcji, do czego zresztą wydawnictwo Zysk zdążyło już czytelników przyzwyczaić. O urokliwości (świetna jest ta okładka z komiksowymi asteroidami) wydania nie wspominam bez powodu, ponieważ ta atrakcyjność idealnie koresponduje ze sposobem pisania autora i powinna zainteresować młodszego czytelnika, bo według mnie właśnie dla nastolatków ta książka została napisana.
Sean B. Carrol pisze bardzo lekko, ale co najważniejsze z sensem. Nie stroni od nerdowskich żartów, czasem nawet zdarza mu się rzucić jakimś nie za mocnym bluzgiem. Przykłady „życia wzięte”, jakimi ilustruje zagadnienia poruszane w poszczególnych rozdziałach, są frapujące i dodatkowo pokazują moc przypadku w naszym codziennym życiu, ale Carrol bryluje nie tylko w śmieszkowaniu i ciekawostkach. Z równą łatwością cytuje Ricky’ego Gervais’a, co Jacques’a Monoda, zresztą ten drugi – biolog, noblista z 1956 roku – jest głównym autorytetem przywoływanym przez autora, a niemal 40 z 240 stron „Serii…” to przypisy oraz spis literatury uzupełniającej. Książka składa się z siedmiu rozdziałów podzielonych na trzy części, które dotyczą, jak wskazuje podtytuł: roli przypadku w procesie powstawania planety (wspomniana asteroida), życia (ewolucja) oraz ciebie (dziedziczenie i DNA), część zasadnicza jest poprzedzona solidnym wstępem, kończy ją bardzo interesująco pomyślane posłowie
Sean B. Carrol napisał książkę jakich na naszym rynku wydawniczym brakuje, z jednej strony lekkiej i przyjemnej w odbiorze, z drugiej merytorycznie wartościowej, ale co najważniejsze, na tyle krótkiej, aby nie znudzić czytelnika. Myślę, że idealnie sprawdzi się jako lektura dla nastolatka, chociaż nie tylko, bo sam – nieuchronnie dobijający do bram wieku średniego – świetnie bawiłem się podczas czytania.
Za możliwość przeczytania książki serdecznie dziękuję Klubowi recenzenta portalu nakanapie.pl
January 9, 2022
Excellent overview of how chance and contingency. Carroll is engaging, and clear, whole using humour to put this stuff in a nice context. The final chapter really brings the whole thing home!
April 1, 2021
I listened to the unabridged audio version of this title (read by the author, Audible.com, 2020).
From the publisher’s description: “Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death.”
Consider the following thought experiment: Draw a line into the past, listing all your female ancestors, going back, say, 10,000 years (your mother, maternal grandmother, and so on). That’s a chain of about 400 generations. Any one of these 400 people could have died as a result of infant mortality, perished by contracting a disease, or been eaten by a wild animal, before she gave birth to the next person on the chain, or could have remained childless into old age. The fact that you exist is a consequence of many chance events all going in your favor. It’s even more perilous than this. Go back a lot further, to your chimp or ape ancestors, or consider also male ancestors, whose genes have contributed to you being who you are. The odds against you existing in the present form are mind-boggling. This is the point of the book’s title, a wordplay on Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, published under the pen-name Lemony Snicket.
The aforementioned “series of fortunate events” is viewed by some as confirming “that everything happens for a reason.” Yet it also gives support to the opposite view, that there is no rhyme or reason to what happens in our world; that we are all products of chance. Here’s a compelling example of chance. The sequence KKKYMMKHL is part of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). A chance replacement of the first M with R created KKKYRMKHL, the corresponding part of the HIV virus, which triggered the AIDS pandemic.
Here’s another example. How and why did the Antarctic Ocean become so cold? Tectonics (the Indian plate splitting from Madagascar, moving northward, and hitting & merging with Eurasia) did it. And what determined the shape and speed of movement for the plates on Earth’s surface? Chance did.
Besides scientists, comedians tend to disbelieve that everything happens for a reason and give chance/randomness its due place. Carroll thinks that it would have been wonderful to bring famous comedians/humorists together to discuss their ideas in this domain. Given the busy schedules of such luminaries, not to mention the fact that some of them are dead, he decided to construct an imaginary discussion, using the spoken and written words of his chosen characters. Here's a sample quote.
Ricky Gervais: “It always comes back to us—why are we here? Well, we just happened to be here, we couldn't choose it. The chance of us being born—that sperm hitting that egg—is 400 trillion to 1. We're not special, we're just lucky; and this is a holiday. We didn't exist for 14 and a half billion years. Then we got 80 or 90 years if we're lucky, and then we'll never exist again. So, we should make the most of it.”
I end my review with this summing-up statement from Carroll: “Chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death.”
P.S.: I had previously reviewed Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2016), giving it 5 stars.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Here’s a presentation by the author (32-minute video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eM4K...
From the publisher’s description: “Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death.”
Consider the following thought experiment: Draw a line into the past, listing all your female ancestors, going back, say, 10,000 years (your mother, maternal grandmother, and so on). That’s a chain of about 400 generations. Any one of these 400 people could have died as a result of infant mortality, perished by contracting a disease, or been eaten by a wild animal, before she gave birth to the next person on the chain, or could have remained childless into old age. The fact that you exist is a consequence of many chance events all going in your favor. It’s even more perilous than this. Go back a lot further, to your chimp or ape ancestors, or consider also male ancestors, whose genes have contributed to you being who you are. The odds against you existing in the present form are mind-boggling. This is the point of the book’s title, a wordplay on Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, published under the pen-name Lemony Snicket.
The aforementioned “series of fortunate events” is viewed by some as confirming “that everything happens for a reason.” Yet it also gives support to the opposite view, that there is no rhyme or reason to what happens in our world; that we are all products of chance. Here’s a compelling example of chance. The sequence KKKYMMKHL is part of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). A chance replacement of the first M with R created KKKYRMKHL, the corresponding part of the HIV virus, which triggered the AIDS pandemic.
Here’s another example. How and why did the Antarctic Ocean become so cold? Tectonics (the Indian plate splitting from Madagascar, moving northward, and hitting & merging with Eurasia) did it. And what determined the shape and speed of movement for the plates on Earth’s surface? Chance did.
Besides scientists, comedians tend to disbelieve that everything happens for a reason and give chance/randomness its due place. Carroll thinks that it would have been wonderful to bring famous comedians/humorists together to discuss their ideas in this domain. Given the busy schedules of such luminaries, not to mention the fact that some of them are dead, he decided to construct an imaginary discussion, using the spoken and written words of his chosen characters. Here's a sample quote.
Ricky Gervais: “It always comes back to us—why are we here? Well, we just happened to be here, we couldn't choose it. The chance of us being born—that sperm hitting that egg—is 400 trillion to 1. We're not special, we're just lucky; and this is a holiday. We didn't exist for 14 and a half billion years. Then we got 80 or 90 years if we're lucky, and then we'll never exist again. So, we should make the most of it.”
I end my review with this summing-up statement from Carroll: “Chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death.”
P.S.: I had previously reviewed Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (2016), giving it 5 stars.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Here’s a presentation by the author (32-minute video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eM4K...
January 10, 2021
a decent little read. saw this on libby and was like hmm sure let’s try something a little different, thought it would be interesting to hear abt how things don’t happen for a reason as this is something I think abt a lot yet have a hard time really internalizing. this was mostly pretty interesting, although I think I zoned out a bit during the descriptions of dna molecules and chromosomes etc. I wasn’t aware until partway through that this book was published in late 2020 so when he started talking abt the coronavirus I was like 😧. which is also what I did before that point when the words “pandemic” and “coup” were read.
for a short book, it went really in depth on a few random subjects. some of which I enjoyed a little more than others. honestly I really liked the chapter on natural selection even if it was mostly a throwback to like.. grade nine science or whatever. biology is confirmed as the best science once again! also thoroughly enjoyed one of the earliest chapters on jacques monod’s book about chance (which just took me way too long to google bc I couldn’t remember the title or how to spell his name). I liked a lot of the quotes/anecdotes that started off the chapters as well. I was a little less interested in the chapters about human genes idk why really.
I guess some problems I had were that obviously science and religion have a tough history together but I also think it’s probably possible to believe in some sort of higher power and also believe in science so I found some of that conversation a little dismissive/essentialist. I’m not even a spiritual person really so idk why I’m bothered. also although I really enjoyed the afterword, which was partially formatted as a fake conversation between comedians and philosophers about chance/the meaning of life, but the figures the author chose were all men of varying moral quality and also sarah silverman lmao. so a bit of a limited perspective there and on some other topics I think, but like I say I still found it mostly interesting. also unfortunately I think I want to read Vonnegut now so idk what that says about me.
in conclusion: learned some interesting things, thought about the meaning of life a little. spoilers but the conclusion this book offers is “tell the truth, be good to others, and create things” which I think is good advice even if it’s a little basic.
for a short book, it went really in depth on a few random subjects. some of which I enjoyed a little more than others. honestly I really liked the chapter on natural selection even if it was mostly a throwback to like.. grade nine science or whatever. biology is confirmed as the best science once again! also thoroughly enjoyed one of the earliest chapters on jacques monod’s book about chance (which just took me way too long to google bc I couldn’t remember the title or how to spell his name). I liked a lot of the quotes/anecdotes that started off the chapters as well. I was a little less interested in the chapters about human genes idk why really.
I guess some problems I had were that obviously science and religion have a tough history together but I also think it’s probably possible to believe in some sort of higher power and also believe in science so I found some of that conversation a little dismissive/essentialist. I’m not even a spiritual person really so idk why I’m bothered. also although I really enjoyed the afterword, which was partially formatted as a fake conversation between comedians and philosophers about chance/the meaning of life, but the figures the author chose were all men of varying moral quality and also sarah silverman lmao. so a bit of a limited perspective there and on some other topics I think, but like I say I still found it mostly interesting. also unfortunately I think I want to read Vonnegut now so idk what that says about me.
in conclusion: learned some interesting things, thought about the meaning of life a little. spoilers but the conclusion this book offers is “tell the truth, be good to others, and create things” which I think is good advice even if it’s a little basic.
July 20, 2023
I agree, but this was very surface level.
October 15, 2020
Really? Well I'll be damned!
I grew up in a world of Germanic Catholicism, where much was ordered and everything needed to make sense. There were golden doors and burning fires at the end of life. About 12 I started thinking it was all bullshit and I've been busy trying to figure out what IS true since. I'm 73 now and this book helped me to realize I can relax. All I have to do now is to get used to the idea that this is it.
I grew up in a world of Germanic Catholicism, where much was ordered and everything needed to make sense. There were golden doors and burning fires at the end of life. About 12 I started thinking it was all bullshit and I've been busy trying to figure out what IS true since. I'm 73 now and this book helped me to realize I can relax. All I have to do now is to get used to the idea that this is it.
March 25, 2024
INTERESANTE 👌🏻
He disfrutado muchísimo de esta lectura porque cada párrafo estaba lleno de alguna enseñanza, acompañada de datos/tablas/ejemplos y unos toques de una narrativa ligera y divertida. 😊
Ojalá todos los libros científicos fuesen así porque ha sido como un paseo con el típico amigo inteligente que te comenta distintos conocimientos random, pero que en este caso te llevan a conocer mejor nuestro mundo y a nosotros mismos a nivel científico.
Sin duda, un libro para guardar, repasar y compartir. 👏🏻
He disfrutado muchísimo de esta lectura porque cada párrafo estaba lleno de alguna enseñanza, acompañada de datos/tablas/ejemplos y unos toques de una narrativa ligera y divertida. 😊
Ojalá todos los libros científicos fuesen así porque ha sido como un paseo con el típico amigo inteligente que te comenta distintos conocimientos random, pero que en este caso te llevan a conocer mejor nuestro mundo y a nosotros mismos a nivel científico.
Sin duda, un libro para guardar, repasar y compartir. 👏🏻
May 2, 2022
Il libro esordisce con un calcolo probabilistico molto simpatico che sintetizzo: si propaganda che Kim Jong-Il, dittatore della Corea del Nord, fece 5 ace (hole in one) in una partita a golf.
Secondo le statistiche di gioco, Tiger Wood, grande campione, ne ha fatti 3 in 24 anni (1 su 2500 colpi nei par 3).
Va da sé che Jong-Il non la racconta giusta. Ma i dittatori, si sa, sono famosi per far credere di averla sempre vinta, sparandole grosse.
Nel mio piccolo io, che sono una dilettante, ho la probabilità di farne 1 su 12.500 colpi, occasione che ho già esaurito il 26 settembre del 1999. Non mi aspetto un altro colpo di fortuna nelle prossime giocate e un po' mi dispiace.
Così è stato per l'occasione del meteorite di centrare lo Yucatan in Messico 66 milioni di anni fa. Se avesse sbagliato il bersaglio di solo mezz'ora avanti o indietro, sarebbe precipitato nell'Atlantico o nel Pacifico, facendo certamente disastri, ma non così catastrofici quali l'estinzione della quasi totalità della vita sulla Terra e ciò non avrebbe permesso lo sviluppo successivo della vita così come la conosciamo, e noi e altre specie non esisteremmo.
Darwin intuì la legge della selezione naturale, ma ogni cambiamento genetico è anche un gioco alla roulette russa moltiplicato per n possibilità che dipendono dal caso, sia per ragioni intrinseche alla fisiologia della replicazione del DNA (fibrillazione quantica, dove un atomo di H si sposta da una perte anziché dall'altra), sia alla quantità esorbitante di ottenere delle mutazioni genetiche rispetto all'originale.
Detto questo e altri esempi macro e micro che l'autore riporta, dobbiamo metterci il cuore in pace perché non c'è nessuna provvidenza divina che regola la nostra sorte, bensì il caso.
Secondo le statistiche di gioco, Tiger Wood, grande campione, ne ha fatti 3 in 24 anni (1 su 2500 colpi nei par 3).
Va da sé che Jong-Il non la racconta giusta. Ma i dittatori, si sa, sono famosi per far credere di averla sempre vinta, sparandole grosse.
Nel mio piccolo io, che sono una dilettante, ho la probabilità di farne 1 su 12.500 colpi, occasione che ho già esaurito il 26 settembre del 1999. Non mi aspetto un altro colpo di fortuna nelle prossime giocate e un po' mi dispiace.
Così è stato per l'occasione del meteorite di centrare lo Yucatan in Messico 66 milioni di anni fa. Se avesse sbagliato il bersaglio di solo mezz'ora avanti o indietro, sarebbe precipitato nell'Atlantico o nel Pacifico, facendo certamente disastri, ma non così catastrofici quali l'estinzione della quasi totalità della vita sulla Terra e ciò non avrebbe permesso lo sviluppo successivo della vita così come la conosciamo, e noi e altre specie non esisteremmo.
Darwin intuì la legge della selezione naturale, ma ogni cambiamento genetico è anche un gioco alla roulette russa moltiplicato per n possibilità che dipendono dal caso, sia per ragioni intrinseche alla fisiologia della replicazione del DNA (fibrillazione quantica, dove un atomo di H si sposta da una perte anziché dall'altra), sia alla quantità esorbitante di ottenere delle mutazioni genetiche rispetto all'originale.
Detto questo e altri esempi macro e micro che l'autore riporta, dobbiamo metterci il cuore in pace perché non c'è nessuna provvidenza divina che regola la nostra sorte, bensì il caso.
December 8, 2020
Thought provoking, but a bit cursory. The importance of chance is that chance events become critical nodes in complex causal chains with far-reaching consequences, which is to say that they are an element of contingency. Carroll even notes this at one point, but without much discussion or consideration before moving one. How does he not discuss Gould and others' notions of the importance of historical contingency? I know that I am biased, contingency being what I study and obsess over, but it is such a clear and illogical thing to elide over that it is astonishing. I enjoyed the book, sure, and I think it will be valuable to non-scientists who read it, but I think its value is more in being a prod to read "Chance and Necessity" and then move on to works that deal directly with the importance of chance to time-ordered historical systems of causation and, yes, contingency.
August 8, 2024
"A Series of Fortunate Events" is, in the time of clickbait titles and filler "content", a refreshing change of pace. The title really says it all.
You, me, people in general, and the planet we inhabit are the result of chance and a series of fortunate events (from our perspective, the dinosaurs and neanderthals weren't so lucky). Or so Carroll argues here at least - meaning that this book would be much less of a breezy summer read for those who believe in some sort of creator than it was for me.
And the book really is perfect for a lazy summer day or cozy winter night if you're looking for something other than fiction. It's well-written, comfortably paced and structured, and tickles just enough of the gray matter to be stimulating without having to show up a hundred percent. IN a word, nice!
That said, while the underlying idea and argument are profound, this book isn't. It doesn't dig particularly deeply and it's just about introductory. However, it was perfect for me at the time of reading and just, well, enjoyable.
So why not give it a go!?
You, me, people in general, and the planet we inhabit are the result of chance and a series of fortunate events (from our perspective, the dinosaurs and neanderthals weren't so lucky). Or so Carroll argues here at least - meaning that this book would be much less of a breezy summer read for those who believe in some sort of creator than it was for me.
And the book really is perfect for a lazy summer day or cozy winter night if you're looking for something other than fiction. It's well-written, comfortably paced and structured, and tickles just enough of the gray matter to be stimulating without having to show up a hundred percent. IN a word, nice!
That said, while the underlying idea and argument are profound, this book isn't. It doesn't dig particularly deeply and it's just about introductory. However, it was perfect for me at the time of reading and just, well, enjoyable.
So why not give it a go!?
November 2, 2023
Briefly - again, listened as audiobook....
For the most part, I was heading toward five stars on this book. It starts light hearted and fast paced - an easy read. As I was listening to the first few chapters, I was thinking, this is a book EVERYONE should "read" and would love. I wished at times that I was forcing my family to listen to this on a road trip... This is all good for the first few chapters - right through big time life on earth, and evolution - all great - along the lines of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Then we got to genetics, followed by our immune system and things got a little heavy - and simply not likely fun for a general audience. Even at a high level, hand-waving attempt to explain DNA, Alleles, Chromosomes and chance mutations at all the possible points along the way - this is not the place for anyone without some preliminary understanding to try to learn even the fundamentals. And I am just a hair above that. It wasn't even the digressions into the mathematical probability and combinatorics... I get that stuff. It was the AGCT, T-Cells, B-Cells, varieties of proteins, chromosomes, and the myriad other stuff... Sure, no doubt this as an audio-book is NO place to try to enjoy this without the figures and diagrams that are likely included in a print version. So, if you have the print version, good to go. But I'd still recommend a primer in genetics and immunology before you will get the most out of this book.
ok, its not that bad really. I enjoyed it a lot. Just saying, my perspective changed from something I'd have my kids enjoy listening to on a road-trip audio book, to absolutely not... past the first half.
And again for me, humbling and awe inspiring to remind myself the complexities of life at the genetic and cellular level... and he didn't even delve into embryonic developmental biology -for which I consider a complete mystery in my understanding.
That said, I am inspired to pick up some new reading direction - with Change and Necessity by Jacques Monod, as well as some Kurt Vonnegut. On the to read list.
For the most part, I was heading toward five stars on this book. It starts light hearted and fast paced - an easy read. As I was listening to the first few chapters, I was thinking, this is a book EVERYONE should "read" and would love. I wished at times that I was forcing my family to listen to this on a road trip... This is all good for the first few chapters - right through big time life on earth, and evolution - all great - along the lines of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Then we got to genetics, followed by our immune system and things got a little heavy - and simply not likely fun for a general audience. Even at a high level, hand-waving attempt to explain DNA, Alleles, Chromosomes and chance mutations at all the possible points along the way - this is not the place for anyone without some preliminary understanding to try to learn even the fundamentals. And I am just a hair above that. It wasn't even the digressions into the mathematical probability and combinatorics... I get that stuff. It was the AGCT, T-Cells, B-Cells, varieties of proteins, chromosomes, and the myriad other stuff... Sure, no doubt this as an audio-book is NO place to try to enjoy this without the figures and diagrams that are likely included in a print version. So, if you have the print version, good to go. But I'd still recommend a primer in genetics and immunology before you will get the most out of this book.
ok, its not that bad really. I enjoyed it a lot. Just saying, my perspective changed from something I'd have my kids enjoy listening to on a road-trip audio book, to absolutely not... past the first half.
And again for me, humbling and awe inspiring to remind myself the complexities of life at the genetic and cellular level... and he didn't even delve into embryonic developmental biology -for which I consider a complete mystery in my understanding.
That said, I am inspired to pick up some new reading direction - with Change and Necessity by Jacques Monod, as well as some Kurt Vonnegut. On the to read list.
August 12, 2025
O conteúdo é bem mais sério do que a capa aparenta (nunca julguem um livro pela capa).
Estamos todos aqui por acaso, seja pela ordem de acontecimentos, pela evolução, ou por cada espermatozóide que ganhou a corrida.
Porquê nós? Por nada, podiam ser outros. Ponto final.
Noutro canto do universo poderá haver outro mundo com vida, certamente diferente, com os seus acasos derivados pela sua ordem de acontecimentos.
Sean B. Carroll aborda toda esta temática recorrendo não só a história da vida na terra, mas também à genética e ao seu estudo e descobertas atuais, em que este último foi para mim bastante esclarecedor, apesar de biologia não ser o meu forte.
Adorei como o autor começa cada capítulo com uma história que acaba por dar caminho ao verdadeiro tema a ser abordado. De fácil leitura, com uma pitada de humor aqui e ali, deu-lhe uma grande vantagem em comparação com alguns cientistas enfadonhos que escrevem obras torturantes de ler. No meu caso "devorei-o" em poucos dias.
Recomendo tanto para aqueles que gostam de ciência, como para os quem têm curiosidade.
Estamos todos aqui por acaso, seja pela ordem de acontecimentos, pela evolução, ou por cada espermatozóide que ganhou a corrida.
Porquê nós? Por nada, podiam ser outros. Ponto final.
Noutro canto do universo poderá haver outro mundo com vida, certamente diferente, com os seus acasos derivados pela sua ordem de acontecimentos.
Sean B. Carroll aborda toda esta temática recorrendo não só a história da vida na terra, mas também à genética e ao seu estudo e descobertas atuais, em que este último foi para mim bastante esclarecedor, apesar de biologia não ser o meu forte.
Adorei como o autor começa cada capítulo com uma história que acaba por dar caminho ao verdadeiro tema a ser abordado. De fácil leitura, com uma pitada de humor aqui e ali, deu-lhe uma grande vantagem em comparação com alguns cientistas enfadonhos que escrevem obras torturantes de ler. No meu caso "devorei-o" em poucos dias.
Recomendo tanto para aqueles que gostam de ciência, como para os quem têm curiosidade.
March 18, 2022
A short and snappy book about the role of chance in life, the universe and everything, A Series of Fortunate Events reads like an appetizer that made me want to delve into this topic further. Read my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2022...
October 3, 2024
Very accessible. As a high school science teacher, this would make a great foray into the power of chance for my students and bring in some key topics on evolution, genetics, and the combination of the two. Not necessarily a bunch of new information, but an especially simple (and I think powerful) look at the power of chance and probability and it's role in our very existence.
Read
October 29, 2022What a beautiful summary of how we came to be, focusing on the role of chance! What a quick and easy read too!
November 23, 2022
We are luck to be here. Chance is an the main influence on life on Earth. Excellent book, a very good description of genetics.
August 6, 2023
I’m giving this three stars because I had to read it for school so that automatically makes it annoying.
October 12, 2023
كتاب علمي مشوق يتحدث عن دور الصدف والأحداث غير المقصودة في تغيير التاريخ.
January 27, 2024
quick, easy, pretty comical read on the biological luck to even be here to write this review
December 16, 2020
An interesting book on the topic of chance and its impact not only on our lives but also on our very existence. As the title suggests, the author presents a series of fortunate events that led to the fact that we, as the people, are here on this planet today. Sean B. Carroll's main field of focus is evolutionary biology, therefore a substantial part of the book is devoted to biological aspects of human evolution the role of chance with respect to human DNA and effects of random mutations (but not only that). I guess that the main message of the book is that much more in our lives is the result of the blind chance or randomness than what we like to think. It is good to be reminded that just as well as our lives came to be, it could easily end up going the opposite direction subject to a blind chance (surprise surprise).
I liked the epilogue of the book which consisted of the author's fictious dialogue with some of the world's most well known scientists and comedians (making a point that scientists and comedians have very much in common). The conclusion of the epilogue, and also of the book in broader sense, was the notion that certain meaning of life, despite its random properties, could be found in creation, kindness toward the others and a good laugh.
I liked the epilogue of the book which consisted of the author's fictious dialogue with some of the world's most well known scientists and comedians (making a point that scientists and comedians have very much in common). The conclusion of the epilogue, and also of the book in broader sense, was the notion that certain meaning of life, despite its random properties, could be found in creation, kindness toward the others and a good laugh.
August 6, 2025
yay ap bio
January 23, 2022
Nice combination of chance and biology
October 28, 2020
A slightly different view
Excellent, easy to understand explanation of how the universe and the life in it came to existence. Carroll makes it clear that only because of very "unlikely" and seemingly minor changes in a specific process then the outcome changed. He calls these changes "accidents" but I call them the results of a plan made by an all powerful, intelligent creator.I
I gove
Excellent, easy to understand explanation of how the universe and the life in it came to existence. Carroll makes it clear that only because of very "unlikely" and seemingly minor changes in a specific process then the outcome changed. He calls these changes "accidents" but I call them the results of a plan made by an all powerful, intelligent creator.I
I gove
July 6, 2025
I’m reading at least one thousand books of history in chronological order, going from the big bang through human civilization to the end of the world, and this is book #14 in that series. It’s also the last book I’m reading about the overall nature of evolution. This started with Darwin then got into genetics with The Selfish Gene—about how genes, not organisms, are the fundamental players in evolution—and then The Tangled Tree—about how genes aren’t just inherited but can move sideways between organisms, including humans. After this I’m going to start a new series describing Paleozoic life, the plants and animals from Earth’s first few billion years.
Before reading this I thought Carroll would be giving examples about when chance events like the end-Cretaceous meteorite cut off some lineages or promoted others. There's a little of that, but Carroll is far more interested in the nature of chance itself, and at least half of the book deals with topics like human genetics and the nature of cancer—and the chances of each individual contracting or dying from it. In that way, it reminded me of Richard Dawkins' emphasis on game theory and chance in the propagation of genes from generation to generation in The Selfish Gene. There’s as much chance in which gene gets selected to be passed on as there is in whether a meteor will be falling on you today. So Carroll is focused on the genes themselves—he is a geneticist, after all—and the randomness inherent in the creation of each individual organism, rather than the larger kingdoms or phyla themselves.
But I like history, and as far as history goes my favorite event he discusses is how the Himalayan Mountains created humans. By chance, when the Indian tectonic plate broke off of the super continent Gondwana about 140 million years ago, it was (and is) slightly thinner, by about 100 kilometers, than most continental crusts. Therefore, as it moved north toward Asia it traveled at a particularly rapid speed, 18-20 centimeters per year, compared with most plates' average speed of 2-4 centimeters per year. Because it was moving so quickly, it hit Asia about 40 million years ago, causing the orogeny, or growth, of the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (I’m glad I read a book about geology and plate tectonics before getting to life). As the rocks were pushed up into the sky, they underwent chemical weathering, releasing elements like calcium and magnesium that bind with CO2 and pull it out of the atmosphere. The reduction in CO2 cooled the global climate, leading to Antarctica's glaciation and a global transition from a hot to a cool climate, from an average of 77-86 degrees F about 53 million years ago, when the world was also largely ice-free, to about 57 degrees F today. The fossil record shows that drops in temperature were often accompanied by bursts of biological diversification, such as, in this case, ungulates (horses, deer, rhinoceroses, etc.) and primates, including of course hominins. If the climate hadn't cooled after India created the Himalayas, these species wouldn't have diversified as they did, and mankind wouldn't have come to be. So, if India wasn't, by chance, missing that extra 100 km of crust, it would still be dragging through the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Himalayas wouldn't exist, and neither would we. Carroll quotes a geochemist saying that was "the collision that changed the world."
Want a shorter example? The meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs and let mammals dominate actually struck an area of bare earth with particularly toxic chemicals in it; the spread of these chemicals through the atmosphere contributed to the mass extinction. If the meteorite had reached the Earth a mere thirty minutes earlier or later than it did, it would have missed this area and landed in the ocean, resulting in some seismic activity but not the global destruction that occurred. Half an hour either way and the dinosaurs likely would have survived and mammals would have remained in the shadows. Thirty minutes seems like an awful lot of chance in the cosmic scale of things.
Obviously the historical passages interested me more here, but the rest of the book is fascinating as Carroll discusses the immense improbability of any sperm fertilizing any egg, and the even more remote probability of any single chromosome or gene from a parent incorporating into the child's genetic makeup. When you take this back generations, your existence is astronomically improbable—just the result of chance (and an even smaller chance when you factor in the theme of my last book, The Tangled Tree, that some genetic material moves around horizontally on its own without waiting for reproduction to occur). Chapters on how T and B cells build immunity and on how cancer behaves, becoming increasingly probable with age, may seem like a bit of a remove but still center on the same theme of chance and the odds that you're not dead yet; he's just looking at the death side of the equation after examining the birth side of it.
There's a short epilogue in which Carroll splices together statements from comedians like Sarah Silverman and dead philosophers like Albert Camus to talk about chance and how this means there can't be a personal God governing the universe. As a nonfiction writer who goes deep into my footnotes, I imagine that this was probably quite fun to write, but it is quite the digression and perhaps an odd way to end a science book. He never mentions Einstein saying that God doesn't play dice, but his entire argument in these final pages seems to be him finishing that thought. Where Einstein meant that since there is a God, therefore there cannot be randomness in quantum mechanics, Carroll is inverting that, saying is that since there is randomness (chance) not just in quantum mechanics but literally in everything, therefore there can be no God. That's a fine argument to include; it's just moving into philosophy—which even he acknowledges—after a fine book on math, genetics, and probability.
The previous title in my series of 1,000 history books—going chronologically from dinosaurs to pyramids to knights to spaceships, with lots of other stuff in there too—was David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, and the next one is Prehistoric Life: Evolution and the Fossil Record by Bruce S. Lieberman and Roger L. Kaesler. You can also see the complete list here.
Before reading this I thought Carroll would be giving examples about when chance events like the end-Cretaceous meteorite cut off some lineages or promoted others. There's a little of that, but Carroll is far more interested in the nature of chance itself, and at least half of the book deals with topics like human genetics and the nature of cancer—and the chances of each individual contracting or dying from it. In that way, it reminded me of Richard Dawkins' emphasis on game theory and chance in the propagation of genes from generation to generation in The Selfish Gene. There’s as much chance in which gene gets selected to be passed on as there is in whether a meteor will be falling on you today. So Carroll is focused on the genes themselves—he is a geneticist, after all—and the randomness inherent in the creation of each individual organism, rather than the larger kingdoms or phyla themselves.
But I like history, and as far as history goes my favorite event he discusses is how the Himalayan Mountains created humans. By chance, when the Indian tectonic plate broke off of the super continent Gondwana about 140 million years ago, it was (and is) slightly thinner, by about 100 kilometers, than most continental crusts. Therefore, as it moved north toward Asia it traveled at a particularly rapid speed, 18-20 centimeters per year, compared with most plates' average speed of 2-4 centimeters per year. Because it was moving so quickly, it hit Asia about 40 million years ago, causing the orogeny, or growth, of the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (I’m glad I read a book about geology and plate tectonics before getting to life). As the rocks were pushed up into the sky, they underwent chemical weathering, releasing elements like calcium and magnesium that bind with CO2 and pull it out of the atmosphere. The reduction in CO2 cooled the global climate, leading to Antarctica's glaciation and a global transition from a hot to a cool climate, from an average of 77-86 degrees F about 53 million years ago, when the world was also largely ice-free, to about 57 degrees F today. The fossil record shows that drops in temperature were often accompanied by bursts of biological diversification, such as, in this case, ungulates (horses, deer, rhinoceroses, etc.) and primates, including of course hominins. If the climate hadn't cooled after India created the Himalayas, these species wouldn't have diversified as they did, and mankind wouldn't have come to be. So, if India wasn't, by chance, missing that extra 100 km of crust, it would still be dragging through the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Himalayas wouldn't exist, and neither would we. Carroll quotes a geochemist saying that was "the collision that changed the world."
Want a shorter example? The meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs and let mammals dominate actually struck an area of bare earth with particularly toxic chemicals in it; the spread of these chemicals through the atmosphere contributed to the mass extinction. If the meteorite had reached the Earth a mere thirty minutes earlier or later than it did, it would have missed this area and landed in the ocean, resulting in some seismic activity but not the global destruction that occurred. Half an hour either way and the dinosaurs likely would have survived and mammals would have remained in the shadows. Thirty minutes seems like an awful lot of chance in the cosmic scale of things.
Obviously the historical passages interested me more here, but the rest of the book is fascinating as Carroll discusses the immense improbability of any sperm fertilizing any egg, and the even more remote probability of any single chromosome or gene from a parent incorporating into the child's genetic makeup. When you take this back generations, your existence is astronomically improbable—just the result of chance (and an even smaller chance when you factor in the theme of my last book, The Tangled Tree, that some genetic material moves around horizontally on its own without waiting for reproduction to occur). Chapters on how T and B cells build immunity and on how cancer behaves, becoming increasingly probable with age, may seem like a bit of a remove but still center on the same theme of chance and the odds that you're not dead yet; he's just looking at the death side of the equation after examining the birth side of it.
There's a short epilogue in which Carroll splices together statements from comedians like Sarah Silverman and dead philosophers like Albert Camus to talk about chance and how this means there can't be a personal God governing the universe. As a nonfiction writer who goes deep into my footnotes, I imagine that this was probably quite fun to write, but it is quite the digression and perhaps an odd way to end a science book. He never mentions Einstein saying that God doesn't play dice, but his entire argument in these final pages seems to be him finishing that thought. Where Einstein meant that since there is a God, therefore there cannot be randomness in quantum mechanics, Carroll is inverting that, saying is that since there is randomness (chance) not just in quantum mechanics but literally in everything, therefore there can be no God. That's a fine argument to include; it's just moving into philosophy—which even he acknowledges—after a fine book on math, genetics, and probability.
The previous title in my series of 1,000 history books—going chronologically from dinosaurs to pyramids to knights to spaceships, with lots of other stuff in there too—was David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, and the next one is Prehistoric Life: Evolution and the Fossil Record by Bruce S. Lieberman and Roger L. Kaesler. You can also see the complete list here.
July 15, 2021
There are a lot of people (waay too many) who believe that everything happens for a reason. I think this is one of the stupidest things a human can say, yet alone believe. Here comes a long quote from the book:
66 million years ago when the asteroid of all asteroids crashed into the Earth on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. "scientists . . . have worked to unravel how the impact triggered a mass extinction and to understand which species perished, which survived, and why."
"The spacerock streaked across the atmosphere covering the last 50,000 feet in one second. The collision induced earthquakes greater than magnitude 11 (100 times more powerful than the worst in recorded history, caused the shelf of the Yucatan to collapse and launched tsunamis more than 200 meters high . . . . The blast leveled everything on the landscape for 1000 miles.
"The mass of this meteor shower was sufficient to coat every square meter of the planet with an average of 10 kg of spherules. . . . The immediate effect of this molten rain was to heat the atmosphere . . . 400-600 F. The heat and falling debris . . . wildfires across the globe.
"The fires in turn produced massive quantities of soot . . . sufficient to dramatically reduce sunlight for several years, and to block photosynthesis and food production on land and in the ocean.
"The story told by pollen in the fossil record is one of utter devastation. . . . . Depending on location, up to 78% of species went extinct."
Tiny burrowing mammals survived, some of them. Fast forward many millions of year and -- here we are!
So if everything happens for a reason . . . finish the sentence.
(I don't know if anyone even reads this reviews)
66 million years ago when the asteroid of all asteroids crashed into the Earth on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. "scientists . . . have worked to unravel how the impact triggered a mass extinction and to understand which species perished, which survived, and why."
"The spacerock streaked across the atmosphere covering the last 50,000 feet in one second. The collision induced earthquakes greater than magnitude 11 (100 times more powerful than the worst in recorded history, caused the shelf of the Yucatan to collapse and launched tsunamis more than 200 meters high . . . . The blast leveled everything on the landscape for 1000 miles.
"The mass of this meteor shower was sufficient to coat every square meter of the planet with an average of 10 kg of spherules. . . . The immediate effect of this molten rain was to heat the atmosphere . . . 400-600 F. The heat and falling debris . . . wildfires across the globe.
"The fires in turn produced massive quantities of soot . . . sufficient to dramatically reduce sunlight for several years, and to block photosynthesis and food production on land and in the ocean.
"The story told by pollen in the fossil record is one of utter devastation. . . . . Depending on location, up to 78% of species went extinct."
Tiny burrowing mammals survived, some of them. Fast forward many millions of year and -- here we are!
So if everything happens for a reason . . . finish the sentence.
(I don't know if anyone even reads this reviews)
October 19, 2020
Short but highly informative and thought provoking book on the role of chance in evolution. Well written at the layman level, Carroll explains both general ideas of evolutionary biology, major geological events that have shaped and influenced overall evolutionary pathways, and gives a bit of genetic biology and species specification, all the while with some related and often humorous stories. These stories help keep the reader’s attention and ultimately culminate in an imagined dialogue at the end with several comedians and other historical figures.
December 1, 2020
Not funny... unless some crass line about a supermodel hooking up with a billionaire is supposed to be funny?!
Don’t say a third of the way into a book that you’re not going to be forced into describing conception and then spend chapters on it... this book is a mess.
Don’t say a third of the way into a book that you’re not going to be forced into describing conception and then spend chapters on it... this book is a mess.
January 30, 2022
With humour and clear writing for the layman, I’ve been brought up to date ‘paleologically’ and also to a better understanding of DNA, chromosomes, etc. etc. as much as possible for someone who last studied chemistry in 1957! I am not a complete science Luddite as I do read Discover magazine with pleasure. This book was understandable and so refreshing. I couldn’t pass an exam on any of it however. He makes the point about chance so very well…we can be lucky or unlucky. Moreover Carroll has inspired me to read a brick of a book on Darwin being passed around our book group. Thanks so very much Sean B Carroll.
December 24, 2022
The complete title of this non-fiction book is A Series of Fortunate Events - Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You. It is a quick read - just 178 pages in the hard cover edition that I borrowed from the library. Carroll shows the role that chance has played in some major events in our Earth's history. He is able to communicate ideas clearly, along with a few doses of humor. Interesting facts are mixed in - did you ever wonder how fish can survive in the ice cold waters at the poles? It turns out that some fish have added an anti-freeze protein to their DNA. This protein binds to particles of ice that form inside the fish, which prevents the tiny ice crystals from growing larger.
Carroll's first topic of chance discusses the asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. Asteroids this size striking the Earth are quite rare (judging from the size of impact craters found on the surface of the Earth and Moon) - and humans are lucky that this one did hit, because the death of all the dinosaurs allowed mammals to flourish. Mammals had coexisted with dinosaurs for a hundred million years prior to the Chicxulub impact, but because dinosaurs dominated, mammals remained just small burrowing animals for all of that time. Yet just a few hundred thousand years after the dinosaurs perished, fossils indicate that mammals had grown larger than ever before to fill the ecological niche that the dinosaurs had previously monopolized. If that asteroid did not hit Earth, it is likely that dinosaurs would still rule the planet and we would not be here.
Carroll spends a lot of pages discussing Darwin and his discovery that species are not created by a divine being, but instead evolve by random chance from existing species. Darwin spent years studying the techniques of pigeon breeders and their flocks (Darwin also took to raising his own pigeons) and he saw how characteristics good and bad could get passed onto other generations. Darwin reasoned that random mutations allowed animals to adapt to their changing environments, animals fortunate enough to get a good mutation left more offspring, and so successful mutations were passed down to subsequent descendants.
There is a lot of material about DNA and how the A/C/T/G bases bond to form DNA, and how mutations can occur. There are some helpful diagrams that explain how the base-pairs bonds work, and how they occasionally mismatch. There is an interesting story of a gay man named Stephen Crohn who watched many of his friends perish from HIV. Since he had some familiarity with the medical field (his great uncle identified the disease we now call Crohn's disease), it occured to Crohn that he too should have contracted AIDs and died. But he was perfectly healthy - and so he told researchers that he ought to be tested for HIV for immunity. It wasn't until 1994 that anyone got around to running the tests, but when they did, they discovered that Crohn's blood could not be infected with HIV. He was naturally immune! It turned out he had a beneficial mutation, he lacked a receptor protein that the HIV virus needed to infect his T cells. Scientists now know how to make new HIV preventative medicines that block the T cell receptors.
The final section of the book talks about individuals and cancer. The longer you live, the more likely you are to get cancer. That's because every time a cell divides there is a chance that something goes wrong in the creation of a new cell. Sometimes these mistakes result in cells that won't stop dividing, which then lead to tumors. Smoking and UV rays from the sun are problematic because they greatly increase the rate at which cell division could go awry. This section also explains how our immune system is able to make antibodies that ward of infections from billions of potential threats.
There is an afterward in which Carroll imagines humorists discussing chance and the meaning of life. There are some good lines in there: "In a culture that needs caffeine-free cherry chocolate Diet Coke, you'd best deliver information with entertainment." "Truth is the point of comedy. It's usually saying the right thing at the wrong time." It's a good way to finish the book.
I plan to look for more of Carroll's books. He has titles called Remarkable Creatures, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and The Serengeti Rules that sound intriguing.
Carroll's first topic of chance discusses the asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. Asteroids this size striking the Earth are quite rare (judging from the size of impact craters found on the surface of the Earth and Moon) - and humans are lucky that this one did hit, because the death of all the dinosaurs allowed mammals to flourish. Mammals had coexisted with dinosaurs for a hundred million years prior to the Chicxulub impact, but because dinosaurs dominated, mammals remained just small burrowing animals for all of that time. Yet just a few hundred thousand years after the dinosaurs perished, fossils indicate that mammals had grown larger than ever before to fill the ecological niche that the dinosaurs had previously monopolized. If that asteroid did not hit Earth, it is likely that dinosaurs would still rule the planet and we would not be here.
Carroll spends a lot of pages discussing Darwin and his discovery that species are not created by a divine being, but instead evolve by random chance from existing species. Darwin spent years studying the techniques of pigeon breeders and their flocks (Darwin also took to raising his own pigeons) and he saw how characteristics good and bad could get passed onto other generations. Darwin reasoned that random mutations allowed animals to adapt to their changing environments, animals fortunate enough to get a good mutation left more offspring, and so successful mutations were passed down to subsequent descendants.
There is a lot of material about DNA and how the A/C/T/G bases bond to form DNA, and how mutations can occur. There are some helpful diagrams that explain how the base-pairs bonds work, and how they occasionally mismatch. There is an interesting story of a gay man named Stephen Crohn who watched many of his friends perish from HIV. Since he had some familiarity with the medical field (his great uncle identified the disease we now call Crohn's disease), it occured to Crohn that he too should have contracted AIDs and died. But he was perfectly healthy - and so he told researchers that he ought to be tested for HIV for immunity. It wasn't until 1994 that anyone got around to running the tests, but when they did, they discovered that Crohn's blood could not be infected with HIV. He was naturally immune! It turned out he had a beneficial mutation, he lacked a receptor protein that the HIV virus needed to infect his T cells. Scientists now know how to make new HIV preventative medicines that block the T cell receptors.
The final section of the book talks about individuals and cancer. The longer you live, the more likely you are to get cancer. That's because every time a cell divides there is a chance that something goes wrong in the creation of a new cell. Sometimes these mistakes result in cells that won't stop dividing, which then lead to tumors. Smoking and UV rays from the sun are problematic because they greatly increase the rate at which cell division could go awry. This section also explains how our immune system is able to make antibodies that ward of infections from billions of potential threats.
There is an afterward in which Carroll imagines humorists discussing chance and the meaning of life. There are some good lines in there: "In a culture that needs caffeine-free cherry chocolate Diet Coke, you'd best deliver information with entertainment." "Truth is the point of comedy. It's usually saying the right thing at the wrong time." It's a good way to finish the book.
I plan to look for more of Carroll's books. He has titles called Remarkable Creatures, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and The Serengeti Rules that sound intriguing.
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