Life Without Genes

by Adrian Woolfson (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $4.23

  Bringing together the latest insights from genetics and cyberculture, this book contends that all life can be conceived of as information. It explores future developments in genetics, both as a consequence of Darwinian natural selection and under the influence of genetic engineering. The ideas are illustrated by writing that draws on a range of surreal examples including hypermarkets containing every toy in the universe, pufferfish that think like flies, Peter Pan-like trips through human genes and creatures that evolve in months and not millennia. It argues that the future will be dominated by biological machines evolved artificially by a process of accelerated evolution which is called evolution compression .

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.28

  Can life exist without genes? What will living things be like in the future and how did life evolve in the first place? ' Life Without Genes is gloriously playful, enticing, eye-opening and heartening.' Scotsman 'Lucid and entertaining!From Airfix kit-inspired, Just-So stories to lucid descriptions of the work of the mathematician Ilya Prigogine, Woolfson is a virtuoso in full command of extraordinary material.' Simon Inges Taking us beyond biology and genes, Adrian Woolfson changes our view of the future forever. Might giraffes grow taller than skyscrapers? How could crocodiles stay underwater for more than an hour? Is it possible to turn a stickleback into a daffodil, or a tiger into a porcupine? Woolfson asks us to imagine a hypermarket stocked with every possible type of toy in the universe, to see DNA as a infinitely flexible Lego, and he takes us on swirling Peter Pan-like trips through our own genes, showing us the full scope (and perils) of genetic engineering. A uniquely accessible work of science, with shades of Huxley, Lewis Carroll and Darwin, 'Life Without Genes' presents a truly startling vision of a future where the consequences of our current genetic experiments turn out to be both stranger and more foreign than we ever imagined. 'Fine-woven from dreams, swooping around the outer edges of the imaginable, Life Without Genes takes us to some mind-boggling conceptual spaces, conjuring into existence frightening Borgesian worlds, to make us question our assumptions about life!Wildly, ferally enjoyable.' Lisa Gee, Scotland on Sunday