The Music of Life.

NOBLE, Denis.

$975.00

Item Number: 142042

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

First edition of this work by the award-winning physiologist. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Colin Hall with the compliments of the author, and in celebration of OE friendship June 2006 Denis Noble.” Near fine in near fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Brill. Jacket illustration by Hideharu Naito.

The gene's eye view of life, proposed in Richard Dawkins acclaimed bestseller The Selfish Gene, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of genetic codes. But in The Music of Life, world renowned physiologist Denis Noble argues that, to truly understand life, we must look beyond the "selfish gene" to consider life on a much wider variety of levels. Life, Noble asserts, is a kind of music, a symphonic interplay between genes, cells, organs, body, and environment. He weaves this musical metaphor throughout this personal and deeply lyrical work, illuminating ideas that might otherwise be daunting to non-scientists. In elegant prose, Noble sets out a cutting-edge alternative to the gene's eye view, offering a radical switch of perception in which genes are seen as prisoners and the organism itself is a complex system of many interacting levels. In his more expansive view, life emerges as a process, the ebb and flow of activity in an intricate web of connections. He introduces readers to the realm of systems biology, a field that has been growing in strength in the past decade. Noble, himself one of the founders of this field, argues modern systems biology may be the view we need to adopt to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of life.