Fifty years ago Francis Crick and James D. Watson proposed the double helix model for the DNA molecule. They believed they had, as Crick put it, discovered the secret of life, and many agreed. But in the intervening years, science has marched--sometimes leaped--forward, and now the question What is life? must be posed once again. In this accessible and fascinating book, Michel Morange draws on recent advances in molecular genetics, evolutionary biology, astrobiology, and other disciplines to find today's answers to the question of life. He begins by discussing the various answers that have...

Carving Nature at its Joints? In order to map the future of biology we need to understand where we are and how we got there. Present day biology is the realization of the famous metaphor of the organism as a bete DEGREES machine elaborated by Descartes in Part V of the Discours, a realization far beyond what anyone in the seventeenth century could have im- ined. Until the middle of the nineteenth century that machine was an articulated collection of macroscopic parts, a system of gears and levers moving gasses, solids, and liquids, and causing some parts of the machine to move in response to...

Michel Morange updates the history of molecular biology at a moment when scientists are making big strides in genetic engineering and exploring new avenues, from epigenetics to systems biology. Morange places the latest findings and ideas in historical context, describing in accessible terms how transformative the molecular revolution has been.