Dimensions
165 x 241 x 31mm
Gene Justice and the Complexity of Life
The existence of complex life is one of the great mysteries of evolution, for complexity is neither inevitable nor necessary. As Mark Ridley shows in this important and thought-provoking book, two major biological hurdles had to be overcome to allow living complexity to evolve. Complex life is constructed from more genes than simple life. Ridley reveals how life has evolved as a series of steps to deal with error and coerce genes to cooperate within each body.
Ridley goes on to ask whether life will evolve to be even more complex in the future and considers the diverse life forms that could have evolved elsewhere in the universe. 'Mendel's Demon' brings together many areas of frontier science and has implications for our understanding of processes beyond the biological level.
