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People are talking about: Physiologist Denis Noble’s dismissal of Darwinian selfish gene biology

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Specifically about physiologist Denis Noble’s 2006 book, 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.

Of course, but then we would have to give up sound bites, smackdowns, and Darwin-in-the-schools “superheroes.”

Denis Noble

We are told at Amazon: Denis Noble is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford. He was Chairman of the International Union of Physiological Sciences World Congress in 1993, and Secretary-General of IUPS from 1993-2001. Apparently, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, Darwin’s kitty cat,* doesn’t like what Noble has to say.:

Here we go again: someone arguing that DARWIN WAS RONG (well, he was, on several issues) and also that DARWIN’S INTELLECTUAL DESCENDANTS ARE RONG TOO. But this time it’s not a creationist but a card-carrying biologist, and a famous one, too.

Really? Gosh, even the  rescue kitties at the northern branch of the UD News office would be sniffing the wind at this point.

Are Darwin’s faithful starting to get centred out? Thoughts?

* Heck, it’s the best thing about the guy. He loves cats in a world where people are nuts about them in all the wrong ways. It is the cat’s perverse fate NOT to be regarded as “just an animal” when he in fact is, whereas it is the human’s perverse fate to be regarded as “just an animal” when he in fact isn’t.

Hat tip: Matthew Cochrane

Comments
There seems to be a serious error in the calculation in the first paragraph on Page 29 of The Music of Life QH 501 .N633 2006 hardcover edition. Would someone who has this edition please engage me in a dialog about this?cantor
September 10, 2013
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He explains, for example, that DNA, by itself, is entirely an inert molecule. Stone cold dead, directing nothing, doing nothing. - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/on_neo-darwinis075871.html#sthash.H6zUuNSz.dpuf I remember Dawkins conceding this a while back. Kauffman had mentioned it in an interview with Suzan Mazur at the 'Woodstock of Evolution': 'Thus the scramble at Altenberg for a new theory of evolution. But Kauffman also describes genes as “utterly dead”. However, he says there are some genes that turn the rest of the genes and one another on and off. Certain chemical reactions happen. Enzymes are produced, etc. And that while we only have 25,000 to 30,000 genes, there are many combinations of activity. Here’s what he told me over the phone: “Well there’s 25,000 genes, so each could be on or off. So there’s 2 x 2 x 2 x 25,000 times. Well that’s 2 to the 25,000th. Right? Which is something like 10 to the 7,000th. Okay? There’s only 10 to the 80th particles in the whole universe. Are you stunned?” It’s getting pretty staggering I told him. But there was more to come as he took me into his rugged landscapes theory – hopping out of one lake into a mountain pass and flowing down a creek into another lake and then wiggling the mountains and changing where the lakes are – all to demonstrate that the cell and the organism are a very complicated set of processes activating and inhibiting one another. “It’s really much broader than genes,” he said. Kauffman presents some of this in his new book Reinventing the Sacred . ... from this article by Suzan Mazur: http://www.suzanmazur.com/?p=30Axel
August 29, 2013
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