Books
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Properties of Life: Toward a Theory of Organismic Biology
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A coherent and comprehensive theory of life that synthesizes the specific properties of living organisms.
Despite continued advances, science has until now struggled to describe the specific properties that define a living being. By synthesizing several aspects of organismic biology and contemporary science, Properties of Life by Bernd Rosslenbroich generates a coherent concept of the singular quality of being alive—a concept that provides a crucial foundation for scientists, farmers, and medical practitioners and helps explain how we all interact with the world around us and within ourselves.
Is an organism an aggregate of parts or an integrated system with agency? Is it a passive stimulus-response machine or a being equipped with subjectivity and consciousness? Rosslenbroich argues that the way people in different fields understand life determines their assumptions about organic function and behavior. In medicine, this extends to the human organism, which influences prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Drawing attention to a long-standing but underappreciated line of thought in organismic biology, Rosslenbroich’s original idea emphasizes the autonomy of living processes, their network characteristics, and their self-determined organization in time and structure.
A timely and revelatory book, Properties of Life formulates an integrated, unified theory that remains flexible enough to accommodate future developments and resilient enough to withstand the challenges of different theoretical and disciplinary backgrounds.
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Extending the Evolutionary Synthesis: Darwin’s Legacy Redesigned
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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 decades require continuous rethinking and integration of new data and concepts into the theory of evolution.
Key Features:
Comprehensively explains the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
Includes interviews with world-leading evolutionary biologists
Outlines the historical development of evolutionary theory with explanations of open, unanswered questions
Understandably written for a broad audience
Related Titles:
Bard, J. Evolution: The Origins and Mechanisms of Diversity (ISBN9781032138480)
Johnson, N. Darwin’s Reach: 21st Century Applications of Evolutionary Biology (ISBN 9781138584727)
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Evolution: A View from the 21st Century
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James A. Shapiro proposes an important new paradigm for understanding biological evolution, the core organizing principle of biology. Shapiro introduces crucial new molecular evidence that tests the conventional scientific view of evolution based on the neo-Darwinian synthesis, shows why this view is inadequate to today’s evidence, and presents a compelling alternative view of the evolutionary process that reflects the shift in life sciences towards a more information- and systems-based approach in Evolution: A View from the 21st Century.
Shapiro integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism into a unified approach that views evolutionary change as an active cell process, regulated epigenetically and capable of making rapid large changes by horizontal DNA transfer, inter-specific hybridization, whole genome doubling, symbiogenesis, or massive genome restructuring.
Evolution marshals extensive evidence in support of a fundamental reinterpretation of evolutionary processes, including more than 1,100 references to the scientific literature. Shapiro’s work will generate extensive discussion throughout the biological community, and may significantly change your own thinking about how life has evolved. It also has major implications for evolutionary computation, information science, and the growing synthesis of the physical and biological sciences.
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Infectious Thoughts: Discovering Biology as a social science
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The starting points of this dialogue, which is really unique in the history ofscience, are basic knowledge on language and communication from an action theoretical perspective and on the other side basic knowledge of virology and all the detailed interactional motifs of viruses on RNA networks, subviral agents and cellular organisms that constitute this communicative interaction within a dialogue between 2006 and 2020.
Cells coordinate their behavior with other cells, being single cell or multicellular organisms, by signaling molecules, i.e. sign-mediated interactions. This is what we define "communication". Additionally it was clear that the genetic code is a real natural code. Empirical knowledge indicates that no natural code codes itself as no natural language speaks itself. In all cases such codes need competent code using agents of natural real lifeworld. What are these agents, how do they generate sign sequences, combine and recombine, edit, re-edit and care for de novo generation of such sequences?
The current dialogue assembles our thoughts, speculations, inspirations of how to think on code generating and code editing agents on the genetic and subgenetic level not strictly in the terms of physics and chemistry but in terms of biology as a social science. The result are preliminary remarks to a sociology of viruses and a RNA sociology.
The lineup of the dialogue is not always coherent, sometimes redundant, some breaks are usual and many answers as questions are seemingly not related. But the whole documentary gives a good overview how to reach a complete new and integrated understanding of the genetic code and its editors, i.e., viruses, their relatives and subviral RNA networks.
We dedicate this book to young minds and the next generations of the 21st century.
You can download a free copy of the book from here:
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Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology
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Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology showcases the new evolutionary science at the crossroads of biology and engineering and feature interviews with the world’s key scientists investigating how physical forces and mechanics shape life.
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Wetware: A computer in every living cell
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How does a single-cell creature, such as an amoeba, lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds, and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer.
In clear, jargon-free language, Dennis Bray taps the findings of the new discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis of all the distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness, and intelligence.
In Wetware, Bray offers imaginative, wide-ranging and perceptive critiques of robotics and complexity theory, as well as many entertaining and telling anecdotes. For the general reader, the practicing scientist, and all others with an interest in the nature of life, the book is an exciting portal to some of biology’s latest discoveries and ideas.
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Organisms, Agency, and Evolution
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The central insight of Darwin's Origin of Species is that evolution is an ecological phenomenon, arising from the activities of organisms in the 'struggle for life'. By contrast, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, which rose to prominence in the twentieth century, presents evolution as a fundamentally molecular phenomenon, occurring in populations of sub-organismal entities - genes. After nearly a century of success, the Modern Synthesis theory is now being challenged by empirical advances in the study of organismal development and inheritance. In this important study, D. M. Walsh shows that the principal defect of the Modern Synthesis resides in its rejection of Darwin's organismal perspective, and argues for 'situated Darwinism': an alternative, organism-centred conception of evolution that prioritises organisms as adaptive agents. His book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology.
> Proposes a new understanding of the process of evolution
> Offers a balanced philosophical analysis of current debates within evolutionary biology
> Compares and contrasts two central theories of evolution and holds each up to empirical scrutiny -
Synergistic Selection: How Cooperation Has Shaped Evolution and the Rise of Humankind
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How and why has life on Earth become ever more complex over time? Darwin’s theory has provided us with a general framework for understanding biological evolution, but it does not explain the long-term trend toward increased complexity. Peter Corning’s new book represents a major theoretical contribution. It highlights the creative role of synergy – the unique combined effects produced by two or more genes, parts, or organisms – throughout the natural world. As Corning puts it: “Nothing about the evolution of biological complexity makes sense except in the light of synergy… Life on Earth has been a synergistic phenomenon from the get go.” He also shows how synergy has been a key to human evolution, including the rise of complex modern societies. He describes the evolution of our species as a cooperative, entrepreneurial process, which he refers to as the “Self-Made Man” scenario.
“This is an important book,” writes Daniel W. McShea, Professor of Biology at Duke University. “It offers a solution to a problem that has been central to evolutionary biology for half a century, with implications that reach down to the foundations of evolutionary theory.”
Dr. Corning also addresses the future of our species, and of the planet, in the context of the negative synergies that are now threatening to overwhelm us. As he shows, we are at a tipping point in our history. He argues that our ultimate fate as a species will depend on being able to make major social, economic and political changes on a global scale, and he offers us a synergy-based road-map to the future. According to Anthony Trewavas, FRS, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Molecular Plant Science, University of Edinburgh, “This magnificent book reveals the critical role of synergy in evolution and in all of biology, including especially in humankind.” He concludes: “Peter Corning offers us a unique and hopeful new vision.”
Written in an engaging, conversational style, Corning’s book will appeal to academics, students and general readers who are interested in evolution, and in the future of humankind. The late Sir Patrick Bateson, FRS, Emeritus Professor of Biology at Cambridge University and president of the Zoological Society of London, offered this strong endorsement: “Peter Corning’s approach is wise and he is astonishingly well read… He writes extremely well and I read every word with great pleasure and interest. I am full of admiration and strongly recommend it.”
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Evolution, the Logic of Biology
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By focusing on the cellular mechanisms that underlie ontogeny, phylogeny and regeneration of complex physiologic traits, Evolution, the Logic of Biology demonstrates the use of homeostasis, the fundamental principle of physiology and medicine, as the unifying mechanism for evolution as all of biology. The homeostasis principle can be used to understand how environmental stressors have affected physiologic mechanisms to generate condition-specific novelty through cellular mechanisms.
Evolution, the Logic of Biology allows the reader to understand the vertebrate life-cycle as an intergenerational continuum in support of effective, on-going environmental adaptation. By understanding the principles of physiology from their fundamental unicellular origins, culminating in modern-day metazoans, the reader as student, researcher or practitioner will be encouraged to think in terms of the prevention of disease, rather than in the treatment of disease as the eradication of symptoms.
By tracing the ontogeny and phylogeny of this and other phenotypic homologies, one can perceive and understand how complex physiologic traits have mechanistically evolved from their simpler ancestral and developmental origins as cellular structures and functions, providing a logic of biology for the first time.Evolution, the Logic of Biology will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers studying evolutionary development, medicine and biology, anthropology, comparative and developmental biology, genetics and genomics, and physiology.
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The Developing Genome: An Introduction to Behavioral Epigenetics
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Why do we grow up to look, act, and feel as we do? Through most of the twentieth century, scientists and laypeople answered this question by referring to two factors alone: our experiences and our genes. But recent discoveries about how genes work have revealed a new way to understand the developmental origins of our characteristics. These discoveries have emerged from the new science of behavioral epigenetics—and just as the whole world has now heard of DNA, “epigenetics” will be a household word in the near future.
Behavioral epigenetics is important because it explains how our experiences get under our skin and influence the activity of our genes. Because of breakthroughs in this field, we now know that the genes we’re born with don’t determine if we’ll end up easily stressed, likely to fall ill with cancer, or possessed of a powerful intellect. Instead, what matters is what our genes do. And because research in behavioral epigenetics has shown that our experiences influence how our genes function, this work has changed how scientists think about nature, nurture, and human development. Diets, environmental toxins, parenting styles, and other environmental factors all influence genetic activity through epigenetic mechanisms; this discovery has the potential to alter how doctors treat diseases, and to change how mental health professionals treat conditions from schizophrenia to post-traumatic stress disorder. These advances could also force a reworking of the theory of evolution that dominated 20th century biology, and even change how we think about human nature itself.
In spite of how important this research is, behavioral epigenetics is still relatively unknown to non-biologists. The Developing Genome is an introduction to this exciting new discipline; it will allow readers without a background in biology to learn about this work and its revolutionary implications.