The New Biology

by Robert M. Augros and George Stanciu

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877733643
• ISBN13: 9780877733645
• Release Date: June 1987
• Publisher: Shambhala Publications
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 23.0" x 15.0" x 2.5"

Customer Reviews

The New Biology: Discovering the Wisdom in Nature

I thoroughly enjoyed The New Biology for its refreshing and riveting presentation of the microscopic in light of the macroscopic - both in terms of the biological and the logical. From animal behavior to accounting for systemic variation in terms of turning on DNA codes, the book is a very readable and insightful rendering of biological phenomena and interpretation. Although written by a physicist and a philosopher, the book is rich with quotations and findings from pre-eminent biologists that support the theses of the writers. The authors make a compelling case for purpose in evolution and cooperation rather than competition as the guiding principle in living things and communities. A physicist is well-equipped to make the case for "a new biology" in light of the new physics born in 1905 with relativity and quantum theory. The authors argue persuasively, and often using the words of famous biologists, that the mechanistic reductionist paradigm that assumes life is merely the sum of its inorganic parts is rooted in a outdated Newtonian understanding. In order to understand the complexity and integration of living things, the organismic must be seen as more than the sum of chemical phenomena. Using hundreds of examples from the panoply of living things and the findings of experts in their biological fields, the authors reveal the larger organic whole that defies sterile inorganic explanations and take to task Darwinian dogma that a gradual natural selection based on survival of the fittest explains nature as we now know it.