Life Explained
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
“Fifty years ago, Francis Crick and James D. Watson discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, the carrier of genetic information, the basis for heredity. They believed they had, according to Francis Crick’s own expression, found “the secret of life.” The main aim of this book is to continue the story beyond the double helix and interpret recent developments through transformations that have occurred in biology in the last fifty years. These transformations are often unknown by the general public, as if molecular biology had remained stalled around the double helix. But the return of the question “What is life?” is also the result of events that have occurred outside biology, of a general evolution of ideas that we will undertake to investigate.” M. M.
Michel Morange is a biologist, and professor at the University of Paris-VI, and at the École normale supérieur. He is director of the Centre Cavaillès d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences. He is the author of La Part des gènes [The Misunderstood Gene].
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this seamless translation, author and French biology professor Morange (The Misunderstood Gene) addresses the question "What is life?" by looking at answers from Aristotle to the atomic age and "bringing out the various points of agreement and contradiction hidden among them." After addressing definitions of life proposed by others, Morange outlines "three essential characteristics" of life: reproductive ability, complex molecular structures and the metabolic replication of those structures. From there, Morange discusses a range of current inquiries, among them astrobiology research, genome studies and adaptation in extreme conditions. An informative and engaging tour of life, and our understanding of it, as a process "perpetually being transformed," this title should appeal to the more serious of armchair philosopher-scientists.
