《The Vital Question》简介：

Why is life the way it is? Bacteria evolved into complex life just once in four billion years of life on earth – and all complex life s hares many strange properties, from sex to ageing and death. If life evolved on other planets, would it be the same or completely different?

In The Vital Question, Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a cogent solution to conundrums that have troubled scientists for decades. The answer, he argues, lies in energy: how all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a bolt of lightning. In unravelling these scientific enigmas, making sense of life's quirks, Lane's explanation provides a solution to life's vital questions: why are we as we are, and why are we here at all?

This is ground-breaking science in an accessible form, in the tradition of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.

为什么生命是这样的？

地球上单细胞的生物进化到复杂的生命，在四亿年的历史长河里，仅此一次而已——而且所有的生命都有一些共同的奇怪的特性，比如说性、老化、死亡。如果在其他星球上，也存在着生命的进化，它们会不会与此相同呢，亦或是它们跟我们完全不一样。

在《至关重要的问题》这 本书中，作者尼克•莱恩从根本上重组了人类进化的历史，在书中回答了几十年来一直困扰无数科学家们的难题。

而他所给出的答案就是“能量”：所有地球上的生物都依靠着电能，而这电能就来自于闪电的力量。把科学上的谜题一一解开，我们就理解了生命的这些特性。尼克•莱恩的解释回答了关于生命的这一至关重要的问题：我们为什么如此？我们为什么会在这儿？

同类作品参考：《自私的基因》，《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》

《The Vital Question》摘录：

We can take it for granted that animals need oxygen (even though that is not always true), and have it, so oxygen is a common denominator. ...We tend to think of oxygen as wholesome and good, but in fact from the point of view of primordial biochemistry it is anything but: it is toxic and reactive. As oxygen levels rose, the textbook story goes, this dangerous gas put a heavy selection pressure on the whole microbial world. There are stark tales of the mass extinction to end them all – what Lynn Margulis termed the oxygen ‘holocaust’.