Introduction

It was with great sadness that we learnt of the untimely death of Robert Shapiro. Professor of chemistry at New York University. Bob was a deep and highly original thinker–about the origins of life on Earth and, as revealed in his writings especially his highly readable books, on the nature of life and on what other forms of life there might be in our Universe.

 

“The presentation that we have just been listening to is either by far the most important one of this meeting–or else there has been some kind of mistake”.

I really can’t remember the exact words but the above was the gist of the chairman’s remarks about a paper that had been presented at an ISSOL meeting some decades ago claiming to have produced exactly the four DNA nucleotides in one go from a simple “soup”. The sceptical chairman here was Robert Shapiro..(And, yes, there had been a “mistake” as it turned out: a GCMS column had been contaminated …)

Like that other Robert, the 17th century Robert Boyle with his book of 1661, “The Sceptical Chymist”, Bob Shapiro was a self-confessed sceptic and his book of 1986 “A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth” was similarly named. And it had a similar intention: to stir-in some fundamental doubts about ancient and current scientific ideas.

Not that Bob was only a sceptic. In science there needs to be a proper balance in one’s thinking, a balance between tough minded scepticism and naive belief. There is, as it were, a proper setting for a dial. A setting that changes as our understanding develops. In caricature: start crazy, end finicky.

And then we should be careful with ideas that we don’t like the sound of. Counterintuitive ideas. I shared with Bob a liking for ideas that seem crazy–but are not so crazy on second thoughts, that are merely, perhaps, just counterintuitive.

Then there is a corresponding caution needed for ideas that are accepted because, well, they are accepted. Perhaps even “widely accepted” (an especially suspect term).

One of the pleasures of academic life is that one can make friends from all over the world. Dorothy Anne and I greatly enjoyed the occasion when on some trip to Europe Bob and Sandy stopped with us in Scotland. Then one year we met up in Orleans and I recall that Andre Brack had recommended to us a restaurant with excellent food and wine, and remarkable service overseen by a stickler for everything being just so. Bob had ordered fish and had had the temerity to call the head waiter and ask for a knife, an item seemingly missing from his tableware.

“But it’s fish!” was the exasperated response.

However Bob was not in the least put out and Bob and Sandy returned to the restaurant on the following evening.