The logic of life : a history of heredity / François Jacobs ; with a new foreword by Matthew Cobb.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacobs, François, 1920-2013, author.

Contributor:

Cobb, Matthew, writer of supplementary textual content.

Series:

Princeton science library.

Princeton science library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Heredity.

Genetics--History.

Genetics.

Life (Biology).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (376 p.)

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

“The most remarkable history of biology that has ever been written.”—Michel FoucaultNobel Prize–winning scientist François Jacob’s The Logic of Life is a landmark book in the history of biology and science. Focusing on heredity, which Jacob considers the fundamental feature of living things, he shows how, since the sixteenth century, the scientific understanding of inherited traits has moved not in a linear, progressive way, from error to truth, but instead through a series of frameworks. He reveals how these successive interpretive approaches—focusing on visible structures, internal structures (especially cells), evolution, genes, and DNA and other molecules—each have their own power but also limitations. Fundamentally challenging how the history of biology is told, much as Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for the history of science as a whole, The Logic of Life has greatly influenced the way scientists and historians view the past, present, and future of biology.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

I The Visible Structure

2 Organization

3 Time

4 The Gene

5 The Molecule

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691238999

0691238995

OCLC:

1313880448