"For YOU to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you."
Thus writes Bill Bryson in his A Short History of Nearly Everything.
Bill Bryson looks at the bigger picture.
Atoms?
Bill Bryson writes: "they are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive."
We like Bill Bryson (aangirfan: 1950s AMERICA - FEUDAL AND FASCIST / aangirfan: Americanisation).
But, we note that he makes no mention of David Bohm or Karl Pribram.
A hydrogen atom and its constituent particles: an example an over-simplified way of looking at things.
Implicate and explicate order according to David Bohm.
Physicist David Bohm believes that life and consciousness are present in varying degrees in all matter, including supposedly inanimate matter such as atoms.
He suggests that evolutionary developments do not emerge in a random fashion. ("David Bohm and the Implicate Order" by David Pratt)
Standford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram believes in the holographic nature of reality.
Every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.
Bill Bryson writes about the 'miracle of life'.
"The atoms that so liberally and congenially flock together to form living things on Earth are exactly the same atoms that decline to do it elsewhere...
"Atoms are so numerous and necessary that we easily overlook that they needn't actually exist at all.
"There is no law that requires the universe to fill itself with small particles or matter or to produce light and gravity and the other properties on which our existence hinges.
"There needn't actually be a universe at all...
"The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you.
"You must be prepared to change everything about yourself - shape, size, colour, species, affiliation, everything - and to do so repeatedly."