The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. . - We're All Tools of DNA - book review

Jeremy Narby 1998; 257 pp. $12.95 Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam

Jeremy Narby, living with native groups in the Peruvian jungle, kept running into serious people who said that they learned very complicated things from talking to the plants (like designing and maintaining indigenous gardens, polycultural masterpieces containing up to seventy different plant species that were mixed chaotically, but never innocently). The plants told you how to do it. You only needed a little hallucinogenic brew to start the conversation.

Most scientists would have discounted such ideas as the mystical musings of uneducated `natives.' Although Narby was somewhat disposed to this position, he decided to try it for himself. Thus began a rather extraordinary exploration that ultimately led him to microbiology, DNA, and some very provocative ideas about how intelligence and consciousness may come into being.

Breakthroughs in science often occur when a problem is seen from an unconventional perspective. Narby's journey is that of a very thoughtful, curious outsider. He finds potentially significant new meaning from many areas of physical and social science and weaves them together into a plausible argument that DNA is alive and intelligent and that humans are but specially designed vehicles for its/their proliferation. --John Petersen (courtesy GBN)

"A single bacterium contains approximately ten million units of genetic information, whereas a microscopic fungus contains a billion units. In a mere handful of soil, there are approximately ten billion bacteria and one million fungi. This means that there is more order, and information, in a handful of earth than there is on the surfaces of all the other known planets combined. The information contained in DNA makes the difference between life and inert matter.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Point Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group