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The Logic of Life
“The most remarkable history of biology that has ever been written.”―Michel Foucault
Nobel Prize–winning scientist François Jacob’s The Logic of Life is a landmark book in the history of biology and science. Focusing on heredity, which Jacob 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 (especially 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, The Logic of Life has greatly influenced the way scientists and historians view the past, present, and future of biology.
Nobel Prize–winning scientist François Jacob’s The Logic of Life is a landmark book in the history of biology and science. Focusing on heredity, which Jacob 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 (especially 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, The Logic of Life has greatly influenced the way scientists and historians view the past, present, and future of biology.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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February 2, 2021
Le pouvoir des hommes de réfléchir sur le vivant, leur désir de découvrir son origine et sa nature sont l’expression la plus sublime du phénomène de la vie lui-même. Cet essai est une Histoire de cette incroyable odyssée de l’homme pour le comprendre, une odyssée qui continue toujours en méandres sur des chemins imprévisibles.
La première intuition qu’ont eue les hommes concernant les autres êtres vivants était d’observer les différences et les similitudes de la structure visible, et d’en tirer les conclusions pour créer des liens. Des liens souvent en accord avec la conception du monde qu’ils avaient, pour ne pas dire les superstitions de l’époque. La révolution Newtonienne va les propulser hors du superstitieux vers une conscience de la capacité d’étudier les constituants en usant de l’expérimentation. L’influence de la Physique en tant que première véritable Science est décisive. En dépassant la structure visible, des organismes vivant peuvent être comparés à des machines agencées selon des lois que l’homme peut découvrir et décrire. C’est l’âge d’or de l’approche mécaniste.
L’observation de la nature montre quelques tendances que l’homme a toujours cherché à résumer en une loi générale. Que ce soit au niveau de la structure visible, comme l’hérédité des traits, la continuité dans la différentiation entre les espèces, ou au niveau des constituants, comme l’homologie entre les fonctions des organes à travers tout le règne animal malgré son extrême diversité. Réconcilier entre la continuité et la diversité n’était par une tache évidente. A travers les siècles, de nombreuses théories ont été avancées pour s’avérer insuffisantes à tout expliquer : la génération spontanée, la théorie corpusculaire, la préexistence des germes, le vitalisme…
Mais toutes ces tentatives n’ont pas été vaines. Elles ont introduit un aspect essentiel de la Nature sur lequel la réflexion va dorénavant se concentrer : c’est l’organisation. La vie a la même architecture interne. La théorie cellulaire va pousser ce fondement plus loin. Une deuxième fois une science nouvellement créée va venir au secours : la chimie. Elle permettra finalement la compréhension des phénomènes essentiels de la vie telle la respiration et la digestion. Il s’agit du même principe fondamental chez tous les êtres vivants, mais chacun l’agence de manière à l’adapter parfaitement à son milieu.
Cette quête de l’organisation va continuer également en zoologie, ou les chantiers de la classification des êtres vivants et la découverte de nouvelles variations avancent à grands pas. La géologie introduit pour la première fois l’idée de l’Histoire de la terre, les cataclysmes qu’elle a connus imposent une certaine dynamique au monde vivant. Les espèces doivent s’adapter ou disparaitre. Par l’observation des fossiles commence l’Histoire Naturelle, la Nature est elle aussi ramenée au Temps.
Si le vivant n’est plus statique, s’il est plus que jamais lié à son milieu, les lois de ces transformations restent débattues. Les vestiges de l’anthropomorphisme et de pensée téléologique les empêchent d’être formulées. Avec Darwin et Wallace, la contingence de la Nature dans la création de ces transformations est finalement présentée de manière à répondre aux objections des sceptiques. Il n’ya aucune intention derrière les créations de la Nature, elle crée et varie puis laisse au milieu le choix de sélectionner. L’idée est tellement contraire aux conceptions de l’économie de la Nature si chères à l’homme, si contraire à son aversion naturelle du hasard, qu’elle révolutionne toute sa réflexion sur lui-même et le monde.
Mais comment introduire la variation, quels sont les mécanismes secrets qui le permettent ? Une troisième fois le secours viendra d’une autre discipline. La thermodynamique statistique introduit le raisonnement sur les populations au lieu de l’individu. Les lois de l’évolution agissent sur des grandes populations. La méthodologie statistique donnera naissance à la génétique, ou les changements des traits seront suivis sur des populations énormes et sur plusieurs générations. L’hérédité est finalement dans le domaine de l’expérimentation. Toutefois, un maillon primordial reste à découvrir, lier le caractère à son origine matérielle dans l’organisme.
Le développement de l’étude de la cellule va finir par compléter l’image. Sur plusieurs siècles déjà, la cytologie a identifié et isolé quelques constituants qui semblent essentiels au fonctionnement de la cellule. Telle la classification, il s’agit d’une tache de dimensions épiques, vu le nombre, la diversité et la complexité de ces composants. Il était nécessaire d’inventer des techniques expérimentales pour déterminer les structures des molécules et suivre les réactions chimiques et les échanges de matière et d’énergie. Finalement, l’homme est arrivé au cœur de l’architecture de la vie. L’acide désoxyribonucléique, structure linéaire qui se traduit en une multitude de molécules nucléiques et protéiques qui constituent toutes les réactions chimiques de ce qu’on appelle la vie. Encore plus, ces molécules assurent leur propre construction, régulation et fonctionnement.
Si la différence entre l’inanimé et le vivant a été largement réduite au fil des siècles, notamment grâce à la chimie moléculaire. Il semble qu’au fond le vivant est une organisation largement plus complexe, qui se base sur la communication, le transfert et la préservation de l’information, tout en permettant une certaine souplesse afin d’adapter cette information, voire d’en créer des combinaisons nouvelles. L’intégration est également un trait fondamental. La Nature intègre des systèmes simples pour en créer un système plus sophistiqué. Le tout est capable de beaucoup bien plus de ce qui est dans l’horizon de ses constituants.
La première intuition qu’ont eue les hommes concernant les autres êtres vivants était d’observer les différences et les similitudes de la structure visible, et d’en tirer les conclusions pour créer des liens. Des liens souvent en accord avec la conception du monde qu’ils avaient, pour ne pas dire les superstitions de l’époque. La révolution Newtonienne va les propulser hors du superstitieux vers une conscience de la capacité d’étudier les constituants en usant de l’expérimentation. L’influence de la Physique en tant que première véritable Science est décisive. En dépassant la structure visible, des organismes vivant peuvent être comparés à des machines agencées selon des lois que l’homme peut découvrir et décrire. C’est l’âge d’or de l’approche mécaniste.
L’observation de la nature montre quelques tendances que l’homme a toujours cherché à résumer en une loi générale. Que ce soit au niveau de la structure visible, comme l’hérédité des traits, la continuité dans la différentiation entre les espèces, ou au niveau des constituants, comme l’homologie entre les fonctions des organes à travers tout le règne animal malgré son extrême diversité. Réconcilier entre la continuité et la diversité n’était par une tache évidente. A travers les siècles, de nombreuses théories ont été avancées pour s’avérer insuffisantes à tout expliquer : la génération spontanée, la théorie corpusculaire, la préexistence des germes, le vitalisme…
Mais toutes ces tentatives n’ont pas été vaines. Elles ont introduit un aspect essentiel de la Nature sur lequel la réflexion va dorénavant se concentrer : c’est l’organisation. La vie a la même architecture interne. La théorie cellulaire va pousser ce fondement plus loin. Une deuxième fois une science nouvellement créée va venir au secours : la chimie. Elle permettra finalement la compréhension des phénomènes essentiels de la vie telle la respiration et la digestion. Il s’agit du même principe fondamental chez tous les êtres vivants, mais chacun l’agence de manière à l’adapter parfaitement à son milieu.
Cette quête de l’organisation va continuer également en zoologie, ou les chantiers de la classification des êtres vivants et la découverte de nouvelles variations avancent à grands pas. La géologie introduit pour la première fois l’idée de l’Histoire de la terre, les cataclysmes qu’elle a connus imposent une certaine dynamique au monde vivant. Les espèces doivent s’adapter ou disparaitre. Par l’observation des fossiles commence l’Histoire Naturelle, la Nature est elle aussi ramenée au Temps.
Si le vivant n’est plus statique, s’il est plus que jamais lié à son milieu, les lois de ces transformations restent débattues. Les vestiges de l’anthropomorphisme et de pensée téléologique les empêchent d’être formulées. Avec Darwin et Wallace, la contingence de la Nature dans la création de ces transformations est finalement présentée de manière à répondre aux objections des sceptiques. Il n’ya aucune intention derrière les créations de la Nature, elle crée et varie puis laisse au milieu le choix de sélectionner. L’idée est tellement contraire aux conceptions de l’économie de la Nature si chères à l’homme, si contraire à son aversion naturelle du hasard, qu’elle révolutionne toute sa réflexion sur lui-même et le monde.
Mais comment introduire la variation, quels sont les mécanismes secrets qui le permettent ? Une troisième fois le secours viendra d’une autre discipline. La thermodynamique statistique introduit le raisonnement sur les populations au lieu de l’individu. Les lois de l’évolution agissent sur des grandes populations. La méthodologie statistique donnera naissance à la génétique, ou les changements des traits seront suivis sur des populations énormes et sur plusieurs générations. L’hérédité est finalement dans le domaine de l’expérimentation. Toutefois, un maillon primordial reste à découvrir, lier le caractère à son origine matérielle dans l’organisme.
Le développement de l’étude de la cellule va finir par compléter l’image. Sur plusieurs siècles déjà, la cytologie a identifié et isolé quelques constituants qui semblent essentiels au fonctionnement de la cellule. Telle la classification, il s’agit d’une tache de dimensions épiques, vu le nombre, la diversité et la complexité de ces composants. Il était nécessaire d’inventer des techniques expérimentales pour déterminer les structures des molécules et suivre les réactions chimiques et les échanges de matière et d’énergie. Finalement, l’homme est arrivé au cœur de l’architecture de la vie. L’acide désoxyribonucléique, structure linéaire qui se traduit en une multitude de molécules nucléiques et protéiques qui constituent toutes les réactions chimiques de ce qu’on appelle la vie. Encore plus, ces molécules assurent leur propre construction, régulation et fonctionnement.
Si la différence entre l’inanimé et le vivant a été largement réduite au fil des siècles, notamment grâce à la chimie moléculaire. Il semble qu’au fond le vivant est une organisation largement plus complexe, qui se base sur la communication, le transfert et la préservation de l’information, tout en permettant une certaine souplesse afin d’adapter cette information, voire d’en créer des combinaisons nouvelles. L’intégration est également un trait fondamental. La Nature intègre des systèmes simples pour en créer un système plus sophistiqué. Le tout est capable de beaucoup bien plus de ce qui est dans l’horizon de ses constituants.
March 29, 2016
Jacob traces the history of thinking about the nature of life. He goes from Mind-God’s design, to preformation, to mechanism and reductionism, to vitalism, and to cell theory, heredity and natural selection. Cell theory is the beginning of what Jacob sees as a scientific view of life. Cells can be autonomous or they can combine as parts of larger wholes (organs, organisms). In contrast to reductionism and mechanism, and the mysterious holism of vitalism, cell theory integrates parts and wholes so that they function together, as a self-organizing capacity in support of life and replication (i.e., internal coordination of parts and wholes; external coordination with the environment – to obtain energy, and thereby to counter the force of entropy, and to provide barriers against outside threats). Cell theory then moved to genes and heredity, the memory of the species, and genes and heredity perpetuate that memory through replication, and individual variation that is created by random mutation (“without any relation between cause and result”), which is the raw material that is acted upon by natural selection.* When variation is valuable vis-à-vis a particular environment, it is preserved and those beneficial traits spread to become species traits.
As to how this came about, Jacob writes of the continuity of the origin of life with inorganic matter. More than most others, he sees a seamless transition between the inorganic world of chemistry and bonding with the organic world that is life. “Recognition of the unity of physical and chemical processes,” Jacob writes, “has deprived vitalism of its raison d’etre.” He goes on to state that “Biologists no longer study life today. They no longer attempt to define it. Instead, they investigate the structure of living systems, their functions, their history.” He writes further that the “recognition of the purpose of living systems means that biology can no longer be studied without constant reference to the ‘plan’ of organization…an attitude obviously very different from the reductionism that was long dominant.”** Common to both is the capacity for self-organization, of like molecules matching up with like molecules. In the inorganic world, this is seen best in crystal formation that involves “a union of like units, a geometry strictly ordered by the forces which arrange and unite identical molecules.”*** What life adds is the capacity for molecules to replicate and once that happens, life on earth took off to become what we see today. With this scientifically-based outlook, Jacob says we’ve arrived at a surprisingly simple perspective on the origin and nature of life: “The living being does indeed represent the execution of a plan, but not one conceived in any mind. It strives towards a goal, but not one chosen by any will. The aim is to prepare an identical programme for the following generation. The aim is to reproduce.”
“Memory” and “information” do not convey the significance of the genetic core. It’s the brain of the species. It’s the “pre-formed being” of the individual; it is the design of what the individual is to become. This all starts at the level of the gene which first directs the formation of the structural and regulatory proteins that build and operate body structure. “The gene gives orders. The protein executes them,” Jacob writes. Later, Jacob states this notion as “the power to do and the power to direct what is done.” This genetic core is invariant, immune from the environment; it changes only through chance errors in the replication process. The genetic core is the norm of the species and the norm of the individual. Regulation occurs against this norm. Regulation Jacob writes governs that space between “what must be done” and “what is actually being done.” The norm for each organism is set and how that norm is reached and maintained in our interactions with the environment and the individual choices we make is flexible.**** Life is tightly tied to a norm that tells it what to do and, largely, how to do it. There are, in other words, multiple ways to get to the “end” but it is the end that directs the means.
Life’s organization has a logic that exists both at “horizontal” and “vertical” scales, Jacob argues. Life builds on what has gone before and integrates the new with the old. “Organisms are built by a series of integrations. Each stage is formed “by the integration of sub-units” that Jacob calls “integrons.” The logic of the organism (how life operates internally and externally in the environment) and the logic of its evolution, which is how it came to be this way over time, is almost a deductive logic. It’s the unfolding of life, of species through time and of the individual at any point in time, as contained in its genetic core. Genetic instructions are the “algorithms of the living world.”
In elaborating on his concept of “integrons” Jacob’s notion seems similar to Dawkins’ extended phenotype. Our genetic core is expressed outward and is embodied in our various human creations: “From family organization to modern state, from ethnic group to coalition of nations, a whole series of integrations is based on a variety of cultural, moral, social, political, economic, military and religious codes. The history of mankind is more or less the history of these integrons and the way they form and change.”
This is a terrific history of life, though I have two questions about the vision Jacob puts forward. Throughout the book, he makes references to life as reacting to the environment, as if the organism and we are passive beings that only respond to what the environment sends our way. Though this may be merely a terminology issue, it also seems to be at odds with the picture he presents of our genetic nature and its unfolding in time (in evolutionary history, and in individual development). We are first and foremost beings that act, that are designed to act, in the world, and part of that acting in the world is to modify our activity based on what the environment requires. Our interaction is dialectical. Interaction starts both with the subject-thesis acting in the world, as well as the subject-antithesis that reacts to what the environment is doing. The second question I have is whether the genetic program allows for flexibility. As presented by Jacob and Jacques Monod (Chance and Necessity), the genetic instructions are strictly binary, yes-no, actions/reactions, though Piaget and others seem to allow more flexibility and more adjustment based on feedback from the environment, than what Jacob puts forward.
With life comes death, and Jacob has a few words to say about this. Mutations occur in the somatic (body) cells as well as in the germ (sexual) cells, and eventually these accumulate (“senescence as the result of accumulated errors”) to the point where organisms and organization breaks down and the body can no longer maintain itself. This seems straightforward enough, with death being a “by-product” of the negative effects of “accumulated errors.” Jacob’s description, though, makes it seem like death is necessary for evolution: “The other necessary condition for the very possibility of evolution is death. Not death from without, as the result of some accident; but death imposed from within, as a necessity prescribed from the egg onward by the genetic programme itself. For evolution is the result of a struggle between what was and what is to be….with sexual reproduction, individuals have to disappear.” I can’t say I understood what Jacob is saying here.
*Jacob says natural selection acts at three levels – on the gene itself; on the individual; and on the species, “considered as the sum of all the genes belonging to all the individuals in the species.”
**Jacob writes, “Just to hear one of the leaders in quantum mechanics asking, ‘“What is life?’ and then describing heredity in terms of molecular structures, inter-atomic bonds and thermodynamic stability was enough to fire the enthusiasm of certain young physicists….Their ambition and interest were limited to a single problem: the physical basis of genetic information.”
***At the lowest levels of life, Jacob writes that “the integration of the bacterial cell is based solely on the properties of certain proteins, on their ability to recognize other molecular species selectively.”
****“Ethologists consider that when behavior involves acquired experience, it is dependent on the genetic programme. Learning comes into the framework fixed by heredity.” This statement can be interpreted by some to apply to animal, not to humans who have free will. Yet, it can also mean that while our fundamental life ends are fixed (needs), how we achieve such ends is variable and involves some degree of free choice. It’s the distinction between “how do do” versus “what to do.” Clearly humans have greater free choice than animals. What is not clear, and what Jacob does not discuss particularly, is the degree to which the choices we make are influenced by genetic predisposition
As to how this came about, Jacob writes of the continuity of the origin of life with inorganic matter. More than most others, he sees a seamless transition between the inorganic world of chemistry and bonding with the organic world that is life. “Recognition of the unity of physical and chemical processes,” Jacob writes, “has deprived vitalism of its raison d’etre.” He goes on to state that “Biologists no longer study life today. They no longer attempt to define it. Instead, they investigate the structure of living systems, their functions, their history.” He writes further that the “recognition of the purpose of living systems means that biology can no longer be studied without constant reference to the ‘plan’ of organization…an attitude obviously very different from the reductionism that was long dominant.”** Common to both is the capacity for self-organization, of like molecules matching up with like molecules. In the inorganic world, this is seen best in crystal formation that involves “a union of like units, a geometry strictly ordered by the forces which arrange and unite identical molecules.”*** What life adds is the capacity for molecules to replicate and once that happens, life on earth took off to become what we see today. With this scientifically-based outlook, Jacob says we’ve arrived at a surprisingly simple perspective on the origin and nature of life: “The living being does indeed represent the execution of a plan, but not one conceived in any mind. It strives towards a goal, but not one chosen by any will. The aim is to prepare an identical programme for the following generation. The aim is to reproduce.”
“Memory” and “information” do not convey the significance of the genetic core. It’s the brain of the species. It’s the “pre-formed being” of the individual; it is the design of what the individual is to become. This all starts at the level of the gene which first directs the formation of the structural and regulatory proteins that build and operate body structure. “The gene gives orders. The protein executes them,” Jacob writes. Later, Jacob states this notion as “the power to do and the power to direct what is done.” This genetic core is invariant, immune from the environment; it changes only through chance errors in the replication process. The genetic core is the norm of the species and the norm of the individual. Regulation occurs against this norm. Regulation Jacob writes governs that space between “what must be done” and “what is actually being done.” The norm for each organism is set and how that norm is reached and maintained in our interactions with the environment and the individual choices we make is flexible.**** Life is tightly tied to a norm that tells it what to do and, largely, how to do it. There are, in other words, multiple ways to get to the “end” but it is the end that directs the means.
Life’s organization has a logic that exists both at “horizontal” and “vertical” scales, Jacob argues. Life builds on what has gone before and integrates the new with the old. “Organisms are built by a series of integrations. Each stage is formed “by the integration of sub-units” that Jacob calls “integrons.” The logic of the organism (how life operates internally and externally in the environment) and the logic of its evolution, which is how it came to be this way over time, is almost a deductive logic. It’s the unfolding of life, of species through time and of the individual at any point in time, as contained in its genetic core. Genetic instructions are the “algorithms of the living world.”
In elaborating on his concept of “integrons” Jacob’s notion seems similar to Dawkins’ extended phenotype. Our genetic core is expressed outward and is embodied in our various human creations: “From family organization to modern state, from ethnic group to coalition of nations, a whole series of integrations is based on a variety of cultural, moral, social, political, economic, military and religious codes. The history of mankind is more or less the history of these integrons and the way they form and change.”
This is a terrific history of life, though I have two questions about the vision Jacob puts forward. Throughout the book, he makes references to life as reacting to the environment, as if the organism and we are passive beings that only respond to what the environment sends our way. Though this may be merely a terminology issue, it also seems to be at odds with the picture he presents of our genetic nature and its unfolding in time (in evolutionary history, and in individual development). We are first and foremost beings that act, that are designed to act, in the world, and part of that acting in the world is to modify our activity based on what the environment requires. Our interaction is dialectical. Interaction starts both with the subject-thesis acting in the world, as well as the subject-antithesis that reacts to what the environment is doing. The second question I have is whether the genetic program allows for flexibility. As presented by Jacob and Jacques Monod (Chance and Necessity), the genetic instructions are strictly binary, yes-no, actions/reactions, though Piaget and others seem to allow more flexibility and more adjustment based on feedback from the environment, than what Jacob puts forward.
With life comes death, and Jacob has a few words to say about this. Mutations occur in the somatic (body) cells as well as in the germ (sexual) cells, and eventually these accumulate (“senescence as the result of accumulated errors”) to the point where organisms and organization breaks down and the body can no longer maintain itself. This seems straightforward enough, with death being a “by-product” of the negative effects of “accumulated errors.” Jacob’s description, though, makes it seem like death is necessary for evolution: “The other necessary condition for the very possibility of evolution is death. Not death from without, as the result of some accident; but death imposed from within, as a necessity prescribed from the egg onward by the genetic programme itself. For evolution is the result of a struggle between what was and what is to be….with sexual reproduction, individuals have to disappear.” I can’t say I understood what Jacob is saying here.
*Jacob says natural selection acts at three levels – on the gene itself; on the individual; and on the species, “considered as the sum of all the genes belonging to all the individuals in the species.”
**Jacob writes, “Just to hear one of the leaders in quantum mechanics asking, ‘“What is life?’ and then describing heredity in terms of molecular structures, inter-atomic bonds and thermodynamic stability was enough to fire the enthusiasm of certain young physicists….Their ambition and interest were limited to a single problem: the physical basis of genetic information.”
***At the lowest levels of life, Jacob writes that “the integration of the bacterial cell is based solely on the properties of certain proteins, on their ability to recognize other molecular species selectively.”
****“Ethologists consider that when behavior involves acquired experience, it is dependent on the genetic programme. Learning comes into the framework fixed by heredity.” This statement can be interpreted by some to apply to animal, not to humans who have free will. Yet, it can also mean that while our fundamental life ends are fixed (needs), how we achieve such ends is variable and involves some degree of free choice. It’s the distinction between “how do do” versus “what to do.” Clearly humans have greater free choice than animals. What is not clear, and what Jacob does not discuss particularly, is the degree to which the choices we make are influenced by genetic predisposition
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November 4, 2022it's clear that Jacob read the Order of Things a few years before writing this, as he tells his history of heredity by outlining the dominant epistemes that have prevailed over the last few centuries and explains what underlying assumptions and organising principles defined them.
at first early life scientists, naturalists etc. tried to make sense of living things superficially via their 'visible structure'. Finally in the 18th century they hit upon the principle of organisation – which can be traced to the story of an organism's development, its internal anatomy etc. At the beginning of the 19th century (and this mirrors Foucault's account) researchers became aware of the genuine historicity of life, and a theory of evolution became possible. The next big milestones were the familiar 20th century discoveries in genetics and molecular biology.
Probably the most interesting thread for me is the story of the Comte de Buffon's theory of the 'interior mold'. He wasn't a preformationist and recognised that there needed to be a materialist account of how organisms copy themselves. His framing of the problem is a good one: it's quite easy to copy two-dimensional surfaces via a mold of some kind, but 3D structures have an internal structure that won't be copied by a mold that only captures the surface. So an interior mold is necessary (Buffon was speaking metaphorically here). Jacob basically says that answering this problem of the replication of 3D structure could not really be answered until the discovery of DNA, which shows us that you can have a linear 1D sequence that codes for 3D structure, but only if that structure is converted into information first.
This book is sometimes regarded as like the paradigm expression of the view that life is ultimately explicable/reducible to genetic information. But I think that's probably not a fair characterisation. Information is central to the history here, but the concept of the organism doesn't disappear from his account, and the final lines of the book acknowledge (in a Foucauldian vein) that "today the world is messages, codes and information. Tomorrow what analysis will break down our objects to reconstitute them in a new space?"
at first early life scientists, naturalists etc. tried to make sense of living things superficially via their 'visible structure'. Finally in the 18th century they hit upon the principle of organisation – which can be traced to the story of an organism's development, its internal anatomy etc. At the beginning of the 19th century (and this mirrors Foucault's account) researchers became aware of the genuine historicity of life, and a theory of evolution became possible. The next big milestones were the familiar 20th century discoveries in genetics and molecular biology.
Probably the most interesting thread for me is the story of the Comte de Buffon's theory of the 'interior mold'. He wasn't a preformationist and recognised that there needed to be a materialist account of how organisms copy themselves. His framing of the problem is a good one: it's quite easy to copy two-dimensional surfaces via a mold of some kind, but 3D structures have an internal structure that won't be copied by a mold that only captures the surface. So an interior mold is necessary (Buffon was speaking metaphorically here). Jacob basically says that answering this problem of the replication of 3D structure could not really be answered until the discovery of DNA, which shows us that you can have a linear 1D sequence that codes for 3D structure, but only if that structure is converted into information first.
This book is sometimes regarded as like the paradigm expression of the view that life is ultimately explicable/reducible to genetic information. But I think that's probably not a fair characterisation. Information is central to the history here, but the concept of the organism doesn't disappear from his account, and the final lines of the book acknowledge (in a Foucauldian vein) that "today the world is messages, codes and information. Tomorrow what analysis will break down our objects to reconstitute them in a new space?"
January 8, 2026
Un enseignement central de cette magistrale histoire de la réflexion sur la vie à travers les âges en Occident, jusqu'à l'éclosion de la biologie moléculaire, tient en une seule théorie que Jacob réussit à condenser dans la conclusion : la théorie de l'intégron. De la matière inorganique à la structure vivante la plus complexe et aboutie, nous trouvons les mêmes réactions physico-chimiques qui s'étagent, à partir d'unités primitives elles-mêmes composées d'unités initialement indépendantes mais désormais dépendantes, et en vue d'un étage d'intégration supplémentaire, actuel ou futur, chaque étage requérant de nouvelles méthodes d'étude et de nouvelles perspectives, sans pour autant ne rien entraîner d'absolument nouveau, rien qui serait une rupture dans une continuité sans âge. Bien comprise, cette théorie pourrait permettre de fondre religion, mysticisme, science, et sens commun, vie et mort.
April 8, 2018
The wonderful contribution of this work is the linking of the historic status of science and thought with understanding of heredity. Jacob is so successful at creating the contexts of the time that the reader forgets the contemporary state of the art that is so familiar. Of course, Jacob was writing in 1970. True, the meaning of DNA had been worked out, but so much of understanding had yet to be elaborated. With this treatment, Jacob refreshes the excitement and the clarity that today's understanding provides.
The journey is not easy. Each chapter is over 50 pages long, and the pages are packed with information and meaning. It is also written with heavy annotation, countless quotes from particular individuals to bring depth to the description of the state of science at each stage. So, if you are a reader who loves densely packed history, the book is especially for you.
The journey is not easy. Each chapter is over 50 pages long, and the pages are packed with information and meaning. It is also written with heavy annotation, countless quotes from particular individuals to bring depth to the description of the state of science at each stage. So, if you are a reader who loves densely packed history, the book is especially for you.
June 2, 2020
Read more than half of the book for a class of philosophy of Biology. Great book on the subject of history of biology, cannot believe that it has only 50 ratings on Goodreads. It's largest part history of genetics but the book is in no way oriented only to history of genetics. I read Serbian translation, and can say that the book is really easy read. That is a big plus. In the book you will read about biology and theory of information, the progess of theories of heredity. relationship between physics (mostly thermodynamics) and biology, biology and chemistry as well as a short or a bit longer examination of Lamarck, modern evolution synthesis, vitalism and other important theories.
January 26, 2020
Νομίζω αρκεί κανείς να διαβάσει αυτό το βιβλίο για να μάθει σχεδόν όλη την ιστορία της ανθρώπινης σκέψης και πως αυτή εξελίχτηκε. Το βιβλίο αποτελεί μια ιστορία της επιστήμης, μια επιστημολογική παρέμβαση και ένα υπόδειγμα καλής γραφής.
February 16, 2010
Or the intelligence and memory of living things and DNA... Very well written.
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