كانت كتب بيتر أتكينز ومازالت مرجعي الأول في الكيمياء الفيزيائية؛ الكيمياء الكمومية والديناميكا الحرارية، فمؤلفاته هي من أهم الكتب التدريسية في هذا المجال. كتاب "عن الكينونة" هو أول عمل من نوع الفلسفة العلمية أقرؤه له. الفكرة الرئيسية هي أنه عند محاولة الإجابة على أكبر وأصعب الأسئلة الوجودية، فإن المنهج العلمي هو الوسيلة الوحيدة التي يمكن الوثوق بها. من ناحية أخرى، يقوّض التفكير الديني قدرتنا على إنشاء حقيقة موضوعية فيما يتعلق بأصل الحياة، التطور، التكاثر، الموت وما بعده.
أعجبني، لكنه ليس بمستوى ما قرأت من كتبٍ أخرى تناولت نفس الأفكار بشكل أفضل. ( )

This is a very short read, and depending on your position, it is either preaching to the choir, or trying to persuade people who will not be persuaded by the arguments anyway. In my case, the book falls into the first category, and that's not a bad thing at all, but I think the author has a pretty one-dimensional and naive view of religion, as in "pure belief in some mythologies and nothing else", not taking into account the fact that the mess we're in is much more complex.

Apart from the book's naïveté in that regard, it provides a basic scientific tour of what we know about the origins and development of universe and life. There's also ample speculation (with a lovely and unexpected reference to John Updike), but it doesn't take away anything from the general flow of the book. It is nice to see the author's admiration at chemical and biological processes, based on his scientific expertise. It is in those sections where he provides us with a glimpse into the miraculous mechanisms underlying even a single cell, showing how much modern science has achieved in demystifying the mysteries of life.

I can't say this is a bad book, but if you've had a basic science education in physics, cosmology and biology, or at least followed the popular expositions of the modern developments in those fields, there isn't much to be gleaned from this very short treatise. If, on the other hand, you're looking to learn about them, then again, this book is really short and doesn't do much justice to those topics, so you'll need to look elsewhere. ( )

A great disappointment. I had hoped it would be as thoughtful and interesting as Atkins' writing in other books, but he just seems to be in a bad mood, and want to put you in one, too. ( )

A short book about life and how it came to be and how it ends. Deals with cellular beginnings, and cellular death. The book compares scientific knowledge with religious belief, and religion doesn't come off particularly positive, but the book doesn't really make any hard punches, either. It's sort of laid back, which might be suited for an author at or near the end of his career. Pretty lightweight, but an easy read. The author manages to take a gratuitous slug at women in the very beginning; that put the book into a bit of a sour note for me, since it was totally unnecessary. Without that, I might have let the later comment about nubile young (not old) maids pass, but in the long run, it left a bad taste. ( )

A short and pithy statement (chapter titles: Beginning, Progression, Birth, Death, and Ending) of how science gives us every reason to say that physical reality is all there is and that all the extra imaginings of the myth-and-mysticism crowd are hokum. Atkins assumes that some readers will be members of said crowd; for those of us who have already grown up, all the "God"s, "He"s, and "Him"s can be a bit much.