Denis Noble - Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity

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The central message of this book is that living organisms are open systems. That refers to all parts of organisms. All the molecules, organs and systems dance to the tune of the organism and its social context. Those molecules include the sequences of DNA we now call genes.

• How do all these components of life dance together in harmony?

• When did their billion-year dance begin?

• What makes them dance?

• Why is their dance relativistic?

• What do we mean by a gene?

• What do we mean by life?

• How can life depend on dead molecules?

• And what is Biological Relativity?

The answers to these questions form the subject of this book. We will also address the question of meaning. Could all this really happen as a consequence of blind chance? And what could that commonly used phrase possibly mean? What, indeed, do we mean by meaning? Could meaning itself be subject to a relativity principle: a relativity of epistemology?

If these questions fascinate you, then read on.

You will not need to know a lot of science to understand the book: what you will need is a new set of eyes. I will encourage the reader to adopt the eyes and mind of an inquisitive explorer. The scientific knowledge you need to know will mostly be in the book. If you already know a lot of science, you may need to relearn what you thought you knew. Because the central message is that twentieth-century biology went up the wrong street in the interpretation and presentation of its many impressive discoveries.

The reason is that some very influential twentieth-century biologists presented a simplistic gene-centred view of biology using memorable metaphors and brilliant writing to encourage you to adopt their view. And in this they were very successful. Hardly any biological discovery today is presented in the popular media without reference to the discovery of this or that gene for something or other.

This book will show you that there are no genes for anything. Living organisms have functions which use genes to make the molecules they need. Genes are used. They are not active causes.

This book will show you that there is no complete programme in our DNA. Programmes, if useful at all as a concept in biology, are distributed across scales in the organism.

This book will show you that there is no privileged level of causation, which is a central statement of the theory of Biological Relativity.

It will also show you that we are now far from certain what a gene is, and that many of the confusions and misrepresentations of biology arise from mixing up different definitions of genes and genetics.

We don't know when DNA first evolved. But it is virtually certain that it already existed two billion years ago. It seems likely that it must have existed for at least a billion years before that. There are fossils of the simplest cells that go back to over three billion years ago. So, if genes dance, then they have been doing so for billions of years, in fact for most of the period of the Earth's existence, which is about 4.5 billion years.