foreword Nature, looks like It is a common name. under its name, billions billions billions of particles, millions millions millions of times, playing with their endless game. petePiet Hein peteThis short poem by Hein chronicles the traditional world of early physics.But when hopping balls of atoms accidentally bumped together to form a body with a certain simple character, something significant happened in the universe.This simple characteristic refers to the self-replication ability of this object, that is, these objects can use the surrounding materials to reproduce themselves exactly, and occasionally there will be copies with some minor defects in the process.After this one-of-a-kind event somewhere in the universe, Darwinian natural selection followed, and there came a strange and magnificent show on our planet that we call life.Never before have so many facts been explained by so few assumptions.Darwinian theory has more than ample explanatory power.The jurisprudence followed by the self-replication of life is concise and powerful, with poetic beauty.This beauty transcends even the most haunting myths about the origin of the world.One of my purposes in writing this book is to give full acknowledgment to the inspiring power of Darwin's theory of life.Mitochondrial Eve is more poetic than the mythical Eve.

The characteristics of life, with David.In the words of David Hume, what fascinates the once-expectant to appreciate it is a structure composed of elements capable of accomplishing a definite purpose.Darwin called this structure an organ of extreme perfection and complexity.Another feature of life on Earth that also impresses us is its rich diversity.In terms of the estimated number of species, there are tens of millions of ways to create life.Another purpose of my writing this book is to make readers understand that the so-called way of creating life is synonymous with the way of transmitting DNA-encoded texts to future generations.The river I'm talking about is the river of DNA that flows and diverges through geological time, the steep banks that govern the genetic game of each species. The analogy of the river of DNA is an effective way to explain the problem, and it is amazingly convincing.

In a sense, the books I have written are devoted to the articulation and exploration of the infinitely powerful principles of Darwinian evolution.As long as there is enough time for the original self-replicating results to appear, the power of Darwinism can be unleashed anytime and anywhere. "River of Eden" continues to carry out this mission, and tells the story of what happens after the replication phenomenon occurs in the simple atom smashing game from the height of the universe. During the writing process of this book, I was fortunate to receive support, encouragement and advice, as well as constructive criticism from various people, they are: Michael.Birkett (MichaeI Birkett), John.Brockman (John Brockman), Steve.Davis (Steve Davies), Daniel.Daniel Dennett, John.Krebs (John Krebs), Sarah.Lippincott (Sara Lippincott), Jerry.Jerry Lyons.Especially my wife Lala.Lalla Ward.Some passages in this book have been published elsewhere and have been edited for citation here.The descriptions of digital and analog computer codes in Chapter 1 are taken from an article I published in The Spectator (June 11, 1994).The third chapter describes Dan.Nielsen (Dan Nilsson) and Suzanne.Susanne Pelger's work on the evolution of the eye was drawn in part from an article I wrote in News and Perspectives (Nature, April 21, 1994).I would like to thank the editors of these two publications for allowing me to cite the above articles.Finally, I would like to thank John.Brockman and Anthony.I would like to thank Anthony Cheetham for inviting me to participate in the writing of the "Masters of Science Series" series of books.

Oxford in 1994