Download Life Explained (An Odile Jacob Book) by Michel Morange PDF

By Michel Morange

Fifty years in the past Francis Crick and James D. Watson proposed the double helix version for the DNA molecule. They believed that they had, as Crick placed it, came upon the “secret of life,” and lots of agreed. yet within the intervening years, technology has marched—sometimes leaped—forward, and now the query “What is life?” has to be posed as soon as again. In this available and interesting publication, Michel Morange attracts on fresh advances in molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, astrobiology, and different disciplines to discover today’s solutions to the query of existence. He starts by means of discussing some of the solutions which were formulated long ago, environment modern definitions of existence inside of a wealthy philosophical and clinical culture that reaches again to historic Greece. Then, with impeccable common sense and a wealth of applicable aspect, Morange proceeds to put out the elemental features that outline existence. the line to an knowing of lifestyles is still incompletely charted, he concludes, however the nature of its ultimate vacation spot is not any longer an enigma. (20090103)

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Extra info for Life Explained (An Odile Jacob Book)

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But it is more difficult to see how the environment might be responsible for the capacity of organisms to evolve a complex, stable architecture. On balance, the claim that reproduction is the key determinant of life must be considered unpersuasive, for reasons that I shall examine more closely later. David and Samadi are also on weak ground in directly tying the power of reproduction to the presence of informational molecules, in particular nucleic acids. As we have seen, the term “informational” is extremely ambiguous.

This is an interesting way of approaching the question. One begins by deciding what will constitute a satisfactory answer. Any such answer, these authors hold, must be universal, applicable to every possible set of local conditions in which life may appear. But rather than give an answer a priori, they prefer instead to draw up an ordered list of characteristics. 6 In doing this, the focus is shifted from a purely descriptive definition to a causal explanation of the unique characteristics of organisms.

I shall return later to this philosophical argument in favor of taking into account more recent products of evolution. Finally, let us consider a fourth answer, proposed by the British biochemist J. ”9 This answer corresponds to half of the answer given by Joyce, but it is stated more precisely. 10 Perrett’s answer has the virtue of being less abstract than these models, which hold that the special character of life can be found in the nature of the dynamic relations that link the components of living systems, the precise chemical properties of which are not considered to be important.

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