The Meaning(s) of Life: A Human’s Guide to the Biology of Souls

When you get right down to it, humans are incredibly complicated creatures. And yet, compared to the complex biosphere we inhabit, we’re relatively simple. How did we come to be? What does it mean to be alive?

The Meaning(s) of Life starts off with lots of rambling about biology, partially to prove the author’s scientific merit, and partially to isolate all of the aspects of how life developed on Earth – DNA, single cell vs. multicelled creatures, evolution, social development, the role of empathy in human interaction, etc. – before going after the soul itself.

It’s an impressive journey to undertake, but it made me question the author’s intended audience. He uses so much unnecessarily technical scientific terminology that he could easily lose a less savvy reader, but he couches it in a less scholarly style that would sound amateurish from a scientific standpoint.

Although it never really answers the promise of the subtitle as I interpret it – either tying the soul to human biology or describing a biological layout for the soul – The Meaning(s) of Life does provide plenty of food for thought when considering our place as cogs in the machine that is Earth.