What Is Life? Understanding Biology in Five Easy Steps

What is life? Following in the footsteps of Dawkins, Hawking, and Attenborough, the outstanding British scientist and Nobel Prize laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Paul Nurse, strives to answer one of the most important questions in science. By explaining basic processes and phenomena in an accessible, understandable way—without which life would be impossible—he presents in this book the fundamental ideas: where they come from, why they are so important, and how they intersect with one another.

The cell, the gene, evolution by natural selection, life as a chemical process, and life as a flow of information—these concepts are the alpha and omega of modern biology.

“I consider five great concepts of biology, which we will use as steps to climb, step by step, toward a clearer understanding of how life is organized. I will bring them together anew and use them to develop a set of general principles that reveal the concept of ‘life.’ I hope they will help you see the living world with a fresh perspective.”

Paul Nurse

Contents
Introduction
1. The Cell. The atom of biology
2. The Gene. A test of time
3. Evolution by natural selection. Chance and necessity
4. Life as chemistry. Order out of chaos
5. Life as information. A unified whole
Change the world
What is life?