The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity

“The most remarkable history of biology that has ever been written.”—Michel Foucault

Nobel 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.

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The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity

“The most remarkable history of biology that has ever been written.”—Michel Foucault

Nobel 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.

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The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity

The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity

The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity

The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity

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Overview

“The most remarkable history of biology that has ever been written.”—Michel Foucault

Nobel 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691238999
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 08/02/2022
Series: Princeton Science Library , #62
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 376
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

François Jacob (1920–2013) was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1965 and was one of the world’s leading molecular biologists.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Programme

1 The Visible Structure

2 Organization

3 Time

4 The Gene

5 The Molecule

Conclusion: The Integron

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A great story. . . . A compact encyclopedia of biology, it manages to convey, for all the weight of its content, a sense of continual excitement and wonderment."—Lewis Thomas, author of The Lives of a Cell

Lewis Thomas

A great story. . . . A compact encyclopedia of biology, it manages to convey, for all the weight of its content, a sense of continual excitement and wonderment.
Lewis Thomas, author of "The Lives of a Cell"

Michel Foucault

The most remarkable history of biology that has ever been written.

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