Review of Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer

For this week’s blog I want to look at a book that is particularly unique, Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer. This book first came to my attention during my freshman year in High School when I was taking Biology and fascinated by the complex molecular machines necessary for life to function. Specifically, I was amazed by the capacity for DNA to order the construction of proteins, the fundamental components to sustain cellular metabolism, through the processes of transcription and translation. If you’re anyone like me, who is unsatisfied with just accepting things as they are, you might wonder, “how did this degree of cellular complexity arise in the first place?” And while we covered a few popular origin of life theories in class, most of them were unsatisfying answers that seemed like cover for uncertainty. Consequently, after searching for additional resources, I was lead to the work of Stephen Meyer who takes a unique position. In Signature in the Cell, Meyer delves into why all current typologies of origin of life theories fail and eventually proposes an “out-of-the-box” solution.

Meyer begins with his experience investigating the origin of life at Cambridge for post-graduate thesis. He first realized a distinction between the “historical sciences” and “experimental sciences”. While the “experimental sciences” investigate how natural laws and phenomena affect us in a consistent manner, the “historical sciences” seek to explain a distinct event in the remote past, such as the origin of life. Drawing upon the work of great scientists such as geologists Charles Lyell and even evolutionist Charles Darwin, Meyer determined that evaluating a hypothesis in the “historical sciences’ requires analyzing its casual adequacy, or ability to explain the event in question. Meyer then demonstrates that the two main types of origin of life theories, those relying on chance and those relying on chemical necessity, do not have casual adequacy to explain the origin of life. Meyer argues that the chance hypothesis is not reasonable because the probability of forming even a single protein or nucleic acid by chance is unimaginably small given the probabilistic resources available, even if the primitive earth contained the necessary “building blocks” for life. He then refutes the idea that chemical affinities or “necessity” could explain the origin of the first life since the arraignment of proteins and nucleic acids is necessarily irregular. Our experience with chemical laws demonstrates that they almost always produce regular, predictable patterns, which is exactly opposite to the composition of DNA and proteins.

In the end, Meyers advocates for the “Design Hypothesis” or that the work of an intelligent agent is the most reasonable explanation for the origin of biological information. While understandably seaming like creationism, Meyer demonstrates that this framework of viewing science is not novel, but was shared by great scientists such as Kepler, Newton, and even Galileo. For anyone interested in biology or chemistry and want a book that explores how these topics relate to deep philosophical questions, I highly recommend Signature in the Cell.