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Nick Lane

Biochemist at University College London; author of Life Ascending, The Vital Question and Transformer.

1 thing

The Black CloudBook Fred Hoyle

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When I was about 15 or 16, I remember reading a book by Fred Hoyle called The Black Cloud, which I was a budding biologist at the time and this was the first time I’d come across someone really challenging the heart of biology and saying, “You are far too parochial. You’re thinking about life as carbon-based. Here’s a life form which is kind of dust, interstellar dust on a solar system scale.” (03:00:28) It’s a novel, but I felt enormously challenged by that novel because it hadn’t occurred to me how limited my thinking was, how narrow-minded I was being.

Lex Fridman Podcast #318, at (02:59:20); transcript published by the host.

2022-09-07·lexfridman.com ↗

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