How Do Humans Fit into the Story of Life? ~ Jonathan Loh

<p><em>“What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction!”</em> — Blaise Pascal.</p><p><br></p><p>No moment in my teaching career has left a deeper impression on me than a biology class I gave in 2018. The topic was evolution and the tree of life. The pupils were ten-year-olds.</p><p>“So teacher, are all the animals our cousins?” one student asked. I gave a few qualifications, but then conceded the youthful wisdom.</p><p>“Yes. And so are all trees and flowers.”</p><p>The bell rang but many students stayed in the classroom, wanting to hear more about the way we relate to monkeys, dogs, or the silver birches swaying in the schoolyard.</p><p>I’ve taught the same theme many times since, and while doing so, I have developed a very visceral sense that, as Mary Midgley said, “we humans are not just rather like animals; we are animals.”</p><p>At the same time, it is obvious that humans are a peculiar species, perhaps the most peculiar one alive. We speak in tongues, we travel to space, we wreck ecosystems.</p><p>So how <em>do</em> we fit into the story of life?</p><p>Jonathan Loh’s new book, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442556/life-story-by-loh-jonathan/9781911717164" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><em>Life Story</em>,</a> offered me a fresh way to think about this.</p><p>Loh is a biologist, author, and an honorary fellow at the University of Sussex. His book is thoroughly biological, but it also takes human peculiarity seriously. In fact, Loh suggests that humans are extraordinarily weird precisely because we are the first life form to have copied many of the foundational tricks that life itself once developed. </p><p>That central idea takes us from the origins of life and the great transitions of biological evolution all the way to agriculture, cities, and the technological world we inhabit today. We end with reflections on climate change, AI, and Alan Turing’s prophetic-sounding claim that our machines are “only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”</p><p>Enjoy!</p><p><br></p><p><strong>FACT-CHECKING</strong></p><p>No factual errors have been detected yet. If you find a factual error, please leave a comment in the extended show notes (link below).</p><p><br></p><p><strong>LINKS</strong></p><p><a href="https://onhumans.substack.com/p/how-do-humans-fit-into-the-story" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Full show notes with a transcript.</a></p><p>