The Music of Life Biology Beyond Genes

The gene's eye view of life, proposed in Richard Dawkins acclaimed bestseller The Selfish Gene, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of genetic codes. But in The Music of Life, world renowned physiologist Denis Noble argues that, to truly understand life, we must look beyond the "selfish gene" to consider life on a much wider variety of levels. Life, Noble asserts, is a kind of music, a symphonic interplay between genes, cells, organs, body, and environment. He weaves this musical metaphor throughout this personal and deeply lyrical work, illuminating ideas that might otherwise be daunting to non-scientists. In elegant prose, Noble sets out a cutting-edge alternative to the gene's eye view, offering a radical switch of perception in which genes are seen as prisoners and the organism itself is a complex system of many interacting levels. In his more expansive view, life emerges as a process, the ebb and flow of activity in an intricate web of connections. He introduces readers to the realm of systems biology, a field that has been growing in strength in the past decade. Noble, himself one of the founders of this field, argues modern systems biology may be the view we need to adopt to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of life. Drawing on his experiences in his research on the heartbeat, and on evolutionary biology, development, medicine, philosophy, linguistics, and Chinese culture, Noble presents us with a profound and very modern reflection on the nature of life. "A beautifully written book... After the great successes of molecular biology, the time has come to re-assemble the organism. Denis Noble tells us why this needs to be done. He also tells us how we should go about it. Strongly recommended." --Sir Patrick Bateson, Emeritus Professor of Ethology, Cambridge "In this highly evocative essay, eminent physiologist Noble argues that a dominant metaphor in biology is blocking the path to further understanding." --The Guardian

Denis Noble, CBE, FRS, is Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford and is widely regarded as one of the popular proponents (and a very early founder of) of systems biology. He was Chairman of the IUPS World Congress in 1993, and Secretary-General of IUPS from 1993-2001. He played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, one of the international components of the systems biology approach, and Science included him amongst its review authors for its issue devoted to the subject in 2002.
His previous publications include the seminal set of essays The Logic of Life (Boyd and Noble, OUP 1993), and he frequently appears in newspapers, and on TV and radio.