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Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
ISBN 13 | 9780195150391 |
Author | Steven Rose |
Book Format | Paperback |
Language | English |
Book Subtitle | Life Beyond The Gene |
Book Description | A distinct voice in the nature/nurture debate, Rose's series of essays are a response to the biological reductionism of Richard Dawkins's book, The Selfish Gene (OUP, 1990), which insists that all aspects of human life are in our genes, and everything arises as a consequence of natural selection. Rose argues that life depends on the elaborate web of interactions that occur within cells, organisms, and ecosystems, and in which DNA has but one part to play. |
Editorial Review | Steven Rose, starting from his experience in the molecular biology of learning, has writen a guide book for coming to accept how things really are. He creates a new approach by what amounts to a Copernican coordinate transformation, that places the center not in a particle or a gene but in an organism. Thereby he complements the twin pillars of genetic and environmental determinism with a third pillar: the capacity of organisms to organize and direct their own trajectories. He establishes this principle at the start of his book and builds on it stepwise with brilliant commentary and lucid illustrations. Unlike complexity theory, this is not rhetoric. It is solid science come to maturity, that can profitably be absorbed alike by physicists, biologists, sociologists, and the general reader."--Walter Freeman, Professor of the Graduate School, University of California at Berkeley "Here are answers for those uncomfortable with the ultra-Darwinism and extreme reductionism that characterizes much of modern biological thought. Rose is one of a small but growing group of biologists who argues instead that we can only understand genes, cells, and organisms by looking at their current and historical locations and contexts. He provides a welcome antidote to the gene's-eye view of the world."--Anne Fausto Sterling, author of Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men |
About the Author | Steven Rose is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biology, Open University. He won the 1993 British Science Book Prize for The Making of Memory, and is also the author of The Conscious Brain and Not in Our Genes. |
Publication Date | 09 Oct 2003 |
Number of Pages | 352 |
Lifelines: Life Beyond The Gene paperback english - 09 Oct 2003