‘How Life Works’ Review: More Than a Box of Chocolates

The frontispiece of the first edition of “Systema Naturae” (1735) depicts the botanist Carl Linnaeus as an Adam-like figure, liberally dispensing names to the newly generated creatures of the natural world. The notion reflected here, that living organisms are the immutable products of divine creation, was challenged in 1858 by the naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. They argued that the apparent design of living things resulted, instead, from the incremental accumulation of innumerable small heritable changes over vast expanses of geological time.

While evolution by natural selection plays a critical role, historical contingency also leaves its imprint, establishing features that may be suboptimal or even maladaptive. This and various other constraints—including the need to maintain sufficient plasticity for adaptability—mean that organisms are compromised, inevitably incorporating numerous vulnerabilities. These result, in the case of humans, in an assortment of ailments and a precarious relationship with mortality.