They [bacteria] haven't used it [their more complex metabolism]... to give rise to more complex morphologies beyond the kind of stromatolite type str… - Nick Lane

I think we share consciousness right across... not just even the animal world. I would see it going down even to the level of cells, some kind of flickering of consciousness. So I don't feel alone on earth, but I do think that there is something different about humans.

[W]e can't agree among ourselves, as an origins of life community, what were the conditions... under which life arose on earth. ...Within the field itself, probably the leading candidate... would be terrestrial geothermal systems, starting with and powered by UV radiation. There's been a lot of rather beautiful chemistry... in a terrestrial environment in some kind of geothermal pool... and cyanide chemistry, it works well as chemistry. The problem I have with that is that it doesn't link up very well to biochemistry of cells. I'm a biochemist and I would like to see some continuity between and , and there's not much there, to me. That doesn't mean that it's wrong. It's just that... [I] would like to see some continuity.

I like philosophers. I think they can teach scientists how to think very often, and... there's a lot of sloppy thinking among scientists, and I think philosophers can be quite rigorous about it. It gets a lot of scientists cross with philosophers who don't engage with science, but I think there are more philosophers these days who are engaging in a serious way with science. I think they have important things to say.