The logic of life
Subtitle: a history of heredity
By: François Jacob ; translated by Betty E. Spillmann ; with a new preface by the author.
Series: Princeton science library
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 348
Subjects: Genetics -- History.; Biology -- History.; Biology -- Philosophy -- History.
Description: This book discusses the history of biology and science. Focusing on heredity, which Jacobs 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 such as 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-[337]) and index.
Originally published: London : Allen Lane, 1973.