- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo; New Ed edition (18 Sep 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0006548741
- ISBN-13: 978-0006548744
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,715,245 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
If life started with genes, then hominid tool making may as well have started with the Model T Ford. Genetic processes are too sophisticated to have arisen spontaneously. So how did we come to be? Where must we look in our search for the beginnings of life? Adrian Woolfson is less interested in examining every theory than in exploring and explaining the whole notion of self-organisation: how the simplest self-organisers--the droplet of fat, say, that adopts a spherical shape in water--might give rise to living complexities. On the way, he offers a lucid and entertaining account of genetic processes, their importance--and their limitations--in making us what we are. Woolfson takes a mathematical approach to his subject. From a mathematical perspective, "living creatures are symbols which stand for their underlying mathematical edifices". So far, so dry: but Woolfson leaves us in no doubt as to what this implies: " ... packed alongside the small collection of crocodile gene kit boxes that have ... experienced the thrill of life and tasted blood ... is a much larger collection ... Crocodiles the size of tadpoles, winged crocodiles, tree-climbing crocodiles or crocodiles with elephant tusks and tiger stripes." Might DNA and genetic processes themselves be superseded? Woolfson's account ends on a speculative note. Life Without Genes is ground-up explanation of the first water. From Airfix kit-inspired, just-so stories to lucid descriptions of the work of the mathematician Ilya Prigogine, Woolfson is a virtuoso in full command of extraordinary material. --Simon Ings
Product Description
Can life exist without genes? What will living things be like in the future and how did life evolve in the first place? ‘“Life Without Genes” is gloriously playful, enticing, eye-opening and heartening.’ Scotsman
‘Lucid and entertaining…From Airfix kit-inspired, “Just-So” stories to lucid descriptions of the work of the mathematician Ilya Prigogine, Woolfson is a virtuoso in full command of extraordinary material.’ Simon Inges
Taking us beyond biology and genes, Adrian Woolfson changes our view of the future forever. Might giraffes grow taller than skyscrapers? How could crocodiles stay underwater for more than an hour? Is it possible to turn a stickleback into a daffodil, or a tiger into a porcupine? Woolfson asks us to imagine a hypermarket stocked with every possible type of toy in the universe, to see DNA as a infinitely flexible Lego, and he takes us on swirling Peter Pan-like trips through our own genes, showing us the full scope (and perils) of genetic engineering. A uniquely accessible work of science, with shades of Huxley, Lewis Carroll and Darwin, ‘Life Without Genes’ presents a truly startling vision of a future where the consequences of our current genetic experiments turn out to be both stranger and more foreign than we ever imagined.
‘Fine-woven from dreams, swooping around the outer edges of the imaginable, “Life Without Genes” takes us to some mind-boggling conceptual spaces, conjuring into existence frightening Borgesian worlds, to make us question our assumptions about life…Wildly, ferally enjoyable.’ Lisa Gee, Scotland on Sunday
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Life without genes is quite different to any other
popular science book as the author combines a literary
style with up-to-date genetic information. Woolfson
addressed the key questions of the origin of life
which are how was the fist DNA program programmed and
what sort of simple genetic technologies might have
preceded the complex DNA technology used by all living
things today. The answer accordingto Woolfosn is
self-asembling networks of proteins (geneless life)
which later became infected with replicating RNA and
DNA polymers (lifeless genes). He then goes on to make
a distinction between the logical computational
aspects of living things and the actual technologies
in whichthis logic is realized. He predicts that in
the future living thigns will be designed from first
pricniples. I very much enjoyed this book. It was a
shame that it lacked an index, but otherwise I would
highly recommend it to anyone interested in what life
is and where we all came from!
popular science book as the author combines a literary
style with up-to-date genetic information. Woolfson
addressed the key questions of the origin of life
which are how was the fist DNA program programmed and
what sort of simple genetic technologies might have
preceded the complex DNA technology used by all living
things today. The answer accordingto Woolfosn is
self-asembling networks of proteins (geneless life)
which later became infected with replicating RNA and
DNA polymers (lifeless genes). He then goes on to make
a distinction between the logical computational
aspects of living things and the actual technologies
in whichthis logic is realized. He predicts that in
the future living thigns will be designed from first
pricniples. I very much enjoyed this book. It was a
shame that it lacked an index, but otherwise I would
highly recommend it to anyone interested in what life
is and where we all came from!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you're looking for an easy read, this is not it! If you're looking for a work of scientific depth expressed in language that shows you that the author is aware of the "meaning of it all", and is not just writing as a dry, scientific exercise, then this is the book for you!
The author takes the reader through the basics of genetics, through the enormity of the possibilities it offers, and into the origins of life. He also posits the idea that perhaps DNA and RNA are merely the current state of affairs, not necessarily always to remain with us. Like the stone age gave way to the iron age which gave way to the bronze age, maybe there were precursors to DNA and RNA, and perhaps there will be successors too.
The only problem I had was that, as a non life-sciences person, I had no previous knowledge of the subject at all, and it was only after I had read a simpler primer that I was able to appreciate what the author had to say. That's why I have given it four stars instead of five.
All in all, a very good read, absorbing and enthralling, with bits to chew over and think about, and bits to laugh at. Literary science at its best!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Woolfson argues for complex, self-sustaining blobs arising through chemical action and only later being 'invaded' by RNA or somesuch. He does not tackle the likelihood of this happening. In the absence of his woolly theory, we have to assume that early replicators arose by chance and multiplied just because they were good at it; however, Woolfson requires us to accept not only this but also the simultaneous arising of his dynamic blobs. Both blobs and replicators would have to occur in sufficient numbers, in the same time-frame and locality, to make the 'invasion' he requires plausible - this despite the fact that in the absence of genes there is no imperative or mechanism for replication driving these blobs. Even then, he did not persuade me that his invaders could come to encode the existing dynamic systems they happen to have fallen into. And why regard the unreplicating blobs as 'life' and the self-reproducing RNA as mere floating junk? It all smacks of special pleading, and to no great purpose.
Meanwhile, his flights of fancy are not always illuminating and are sometimes indulgent to the point of being pretentious. And the hard science (if you can call this hand-wavey stuff that) is dry as parchment and sometimes heavy-going. If there's something in his theory, I wait for a better communicator to expound it. Stick to Dawkins and Dennett.
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