The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes (Paperback)

~ Denis Noble (Author) "For humans at least, to live is to experience..." (more)
Key Phrases: artist disappears, pacemaker rhythm, virtual heart, The Opera Theatre, The Rhythm Section, The Orchestra (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

`Review from previous edition A beautifully written book... After the great successes of molecular biology, the time has come to re-assemble the organism. Denis Noble tells us why this needs to be done. He also tells us how we should go about it. Strongly recommended. ' Sir Patrick Bateson, F.R.S., Emeritus Professor of Ethology, Cambridge

`highly evocative essay' Steven Poole, The Guardian

Product Description

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.
Drawing on his experiences in his research on the heartbeat, and on evolutionary biology, development, medicine, philosophy, linguistics, and Chinese culture, Noble presents us with a profound and very modern reflection on the nature of life.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199228361
• ISBN-13: 978-0199228362
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #343,780 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Small in size; big on ideas, December 16, 2008

By	Steve Benner "Stonegnome" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Denis Noble describes his short book, "The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes", as a polemic. It is, in fact, a clarion call for a rethink to the reductionist dogmas that currently plague--and hinder--so much scientific thinking, particularly in the field of biology and, most especially, genetics. Professor Noble is not, of course, alone in making this call (see, for instance, Stuart Kaufmann's "Reinventing the Sacred" or "Evolution in Four Dimensions" by Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb) but he presents a particularly clear-sighted argument which few others have so far matched. His is a far-reaching and eminently readable disquisition, attacking first the popular metaphor articulated primarily by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" (and promulgated endlessly--usually incorrectly--by science popularists ever since) that genes are the engines of evolution and each genome a comprehensive "program of life". Throughout his book, Noble turns that view around with a different and far more accurate metaphor, presenting the genome as a database from which the organism can select in order to call upon an elegant modularity of gene expression in a bewildering display of inventiveness of response to environmental and physiological conditions.

Along the way, the author uses a series of music-related analogies to extend his metaphor and piece together the various fragments of his argument into a coherent look at the biology of the organism as a fully functioning system, operating on and at many levels. He shows that far from the established view where the arrows of explanation all point downwards to the lower, ever more fundamental elements of cellular physiology (ending up ultimately at DNA as the primary explanatory element) there exists in reality a complex system of feedback pathways which enable the organism to act upon its own genetic material, altering the way that each gene is expressed in combination with others as a consequence of their whereabouts within the organism, or the conditions to which the organism may be subjected. Within this systems view of biological functioning, the complex pathways of interaction become the primary explanatory elements, rather than any of the physical components themselves.

This single insight provides several additional mechanisms for the operation of evolution through natural selection over and above the simplistic one of random gene mutation which is held in such high regard by today's neo-Darwinists, and reopens the door to the long-ridiculed notion of so-called Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics. It also calls into question the wisdom of, for instance, neurologists seeking the physical location of "the self" within the prescient organism; within Noble's view of things, such concepts as "the self" cease to have any likelihood of an actual physical presence (as separate, identifiable entities within the organism) but instead become emergent functional properties of a level of operation of the biological system itself.

It should be clear by now that this book presents serious challenges to a great deal of current biological dogma and there will be many readers for whom this book is an eye-opener. It is an easy and entertaining read for anyone with even a smattering of science and regardless of whether or not you finally come to agree with Denis Noble, you can be sure you'll find what he has to say interesting and enlightening.

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful book, September 18, 2009

By	Douglas G. Rocha (MA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Using colorful analogies, and lots of amusing parables, Noble offers a convincing alternative to the gene-centered view of evolution and introduces the interesting idea that consciousness is a process involving the endochrine system and nervous system, not just a location in the brain.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent text!, March 18, 2009

By	S. M. Collins (Lowell, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Noble has summarized the importance of non reductionist thinking in the life sciences extremely well with this book. He has made a compelling argument that is highly relevant to life sciences, using metaphor, analogy and several clear examples from recent developments in genomics and proteomics, that (as Anderson wrote in 1972) - "More is Different."

I intend to use this as a primer in my applied / integrative physiology courses - am hopeful that students in the health sciences would help pave the way toward a more integrated understanding of health through a more integrated understanding of life itself.