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This fully updated and expanded edition addresses the origins of biological and synthetic life from a systems biology perspective.
We can have a sense that when we try to do right by one another, we aren't merely striving against ourselves. The feeling is that we are struggling against something--someone-else. As if there's a force-a person- that wishes us ill. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul describes just such a person: Sin, a cosmic tyrant who constrains our moral freedom, confuses our moral judgment, and condemns us to slavery and to death. Commentators have long argued about whether Paul literally means to say Sin is a person or is simply indulging in literary personification, but regardless of Paul's intentions, for modern readers it would seem clear enough: there is no such thing as a cosmic tyrant....
What is Life? Decades of research have resulted in the full mapping of the human genome - three billion pairs of code whose functions are only now being understood. The gene's eye view of life, advocated by evolutionary biology, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of the genetic codes.But for a physiologist, working with the living organism, the view is a very different one. Denis Noble is a world renowned physiologist, and sets out an alternative view to the question - one that becomes deeply significant in terms of the living, breathing organism. The genome is not life itself. Noble argues that far from genes building organisms, they should be seen as prisoners of the o...
The theory of evolution is itself evolving with new findings and changes in the fundamental underlying concepts. It is true that today's synthetic theory, which goes back to Darwin, is persistently successful. However, it offers no convincing explanation to many questions, some examples of which are as follows: What forms of inheritance exist besides genetics; how complex variations, especially evolutionary innovations such as bird feathers and turtle shells, arise; how the environment affects the evolution of species and is changed by them simultaneously; and why the evolution of birds, corals, and human culture is not explainable by natural selection alone. Scientific findings of the last ...
This book represents a contribution to both border studies and short story studies. In today’s world, there is ample evidence of the return of borders worldwide: as material reality, as a concept, and as a way of thinking. This collection of critical essays focuses on the ways in which the contemporary British short story mirrors, questions and engages with border issues in national and individual life. At the same time, the concept of the border, as well as neighbouring notions of liminality and intersectionality, is used to illuminate the short story’s unique aesthetic potential. The first section, “Geopolitics and Grievable Lives”, includes chapters that address the various ways i...
With devastating logic and clarity, Dr Pandora Pound, Research Director at Safer Medicines Trust, comprehensively dismantles the case for animal research, bringing to an end the 150-year-old debate about its value once and for all.
This book formulates a relativistic theory of biology, challenging the common gene-centred view of organisms.
This is a scientific and philosophical autobiography written around a collection of Denis Noble's most significant papers. It traces a remarkable journey from na ve reductionism to a rigorous systems approach to living systems. It is rigorous because Denis Noble was one of the first biologists to construct computer models of cells and organs of the body. His theoretical work is entirely mathematically based, with no room for ambiguity. Far from the denigration of the systems approach as holistic 'hand-waving', his work is now regarded by pharmaceutical companies and regulators as the gold standard of modelling in the development of new medication. Systems Biology is an idea in search of a definition. This book explains why this is true: it is an approach rather than a subject. Denis Noble's work is one of the clearest examples of the systems approach in practice since it reveals the nature of some of the forms of downward causation in multilevel analysis. The story will delight readers who like to see how scientific controversy is resolved, since many of the developments described in each chapter were highly controversial when they occurred.