The Music of Life: Biology beyond the Genome | 
 enlarge | Author: Denis Noble
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 617261
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 176
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0199295735
Dewey Decimal Number: 570
EAN: 9780199295739
Publication Date: July 13, 2006
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Product Description
What is Life? Decades of research have resulted in the full mapping of the human genome - three billion pairs of code whose functions are only now being understood. The gene's eye view of life, advocated by evolutionary biology, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of the genetic codes.
But for a physiologist, working with the living organism, the view is a very different one. Denis Noble is a world renowned physiologist, and sets out an alternative view to the question - one that becomes deeply significant in terms of the living, breathing organism. The genome is not life itself. Noble argues that far from genes building organisms, they should be seen as prisoners of the organism.
The view of life presented in this little, modern, post-genome project reflection on the nature of life, is that of the systems biologist: to understand what life is, we must view it at a variety of different levels, all interacting with each other in a complex web. It is that emergent web, full of feedback between levels, from the gene to the wider environment, that is life. It is a kind of music.
Including stories from Noble's own research experience, his work on the heartbeat, musical metaphors, and elements of linguistics and Chinese culture, this very personal and at times deeply lyrical book sets out the systems biology view of life.
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Finally someone with knowledge and common (scientific) sense! September 1, 2006
Damir Janigro (Cleveland Hts., OH USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Dr. Noble is one of the most creative physiologists of our time, and not surprisingly he decided to put an end to the endless "DNA craze" affecting scientists and media alike. In an era where everything is "genetic", Dr. Noble lucidly unmasks the pitfalls of gene-centrism, to reveal the powerful and obvious societal and organismal influences that govern gene expression. This little book does not deny the work by Dawkins and Gould (frequently and appropriately cited) but rather redefines the modern Darwinism of life in a more holistic, and scientifically acceptable perspective. The devil is in the details, and we have been fooled for too long by those who only see the music notation of life and not the whole symphony!
Inspiration for a Systems Approach to Biology September 16, 2007
Daniel A. Beard
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This little book is a real treat. Among other things, it is a timely rebut of the genome-mania that has dominated biological science and popular attention paid to it over the past decade. This is not to say that Noble's book is an anti-genome book. On the contrary, Noble presents the view of the genome as not more (or less) than another few molecules that make up the complex interacting soup of life.
One of the gems in this book is Noble's description on the combinatorial explosion associated with the seemingly straightforward task of developing gene ontologies--the assignment of biological functions to genes. Noble explains in simple terms why it is practically impossible to enumerate necessarily immense set of high-level functions associated with a specific gene, and why the quest to map functions to genes or genes to functions is a hopeless task unless one adopts a systems view.
While The Music of Life is build around analogy, one of the crucial messages of the book is that there is great danger in mistaking analogy for theory in science. Noble's deconstruction of Dawkins' "selfish gene" analogy is a striking example. Noble's essay reveals that some of the great current debates in biology, such as that of the Dawkins view versus the Gould view of evolution are really scientific debates no more than they are arguments about the aesthetic qualities of competing metaphors. From a perspective that seeks rigorous testable hypotheses, the selfish gene is perhaps no more rigorous an idea than a god delusion.
The only nitpick that I have with this book relates to Noble's demonstration of emergent phenomena, using the rhythmic behavior of a cardiac pacemaker cell membrane potential arising from the integrated behavior of a collection of autonomous channels and pumps. Perhaps exaggerating to make a point, Noble describes the keepers of the Mercury computer of London University as oblivious in 1959 to the possibility that periodic solutions could arise from autonomous equations. Surely such behavior should not have been outside the experience of a mathematician, physicist, or engineer in 1959. In fact, even in biology the famous Hodgkin-Huxley model had for years been known to show emergent oscillatory behavior. Noble's professed amazement at the emergence of periodic behavior from his model equations may be an autobiographical fact. But I suspect that the real amazement was in the ability of the model equations to simulate observed behavior quantitatively in terms of not just the phenomenon of oscillations, but the size and shape of the period waveforms. In 1959 Noble was working before the age of instant compiling, online debugging, and rapid nonlinear parameter estimation. To effectively model cardiac pacemaker electrophysiology from the channels up in 1959 was indeed an amazing demonstration of emergent behavior in biology.
One of the most important books I have ever read. August 13, 2006
Lars Petter Endresen
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I honestly really enjoyed reading the book "The Music of Life" - it is one of the most important books I have ever read. Denis Noble's analogy between life and music is an important one. Just as music cannot be understood by investigating single notes at a time, one cannot investigate life by looking at single genes only. The interplay between genes, between genes and proteins, and between proteins is just as important as the genes themselves.
What makes this book particularly interesting is the combination of state of the art knowledge in many totally different fields - it is rare to find a book with so many well founded and important philosophical implications of the scientific discoveries in our time. I had to read this book twice to really appreciate all the beautiful metaphors, and I would recommend this book to everybody that enjoyed Erwin Schroedinger's book "What is Life" - this book is an update.
Excellent January 10, 2007
Alzbeta Chorvatova
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very rare work, exceptional insight not only into functioning of the heart, but also into understanding of the life in general. View of a scientific, but also of an artist. Two thumbs up.
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