In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature

by John Whitfield

For centuries, scientists have dreamt of discovering an underlying unity to nature. Science now offers powerful explanations for both the dazzling diversity and striking similarities seen in the living world. Life is complicated. It is truly the "entangled bank" that Charles Darwin described. But scientists are now discovering that energy is the unifying force that joins all life on Earth. Visionary biologists have advanced a new theory that explains how the natural world?from the tiniest amoeba to the greatest rain forest?is constructed, providing a fresh perspective on the essential interconnectivity of living systems. This revolutionary theory explains a variety of phenomena?helping us understand why a shrew eats its bodyweight in food each day, why a mammal's heart beats about 1 billion times in its lifetime, why there are no trees as tall as the Eiffel Tower, and why more species live at the Earth's equator than at its poles. By looking at how living things use energy, we can answer these and myriad other intriguing questions. In the Beat of a Heart combines biography, history, science and nature writing to capture the exciting advances? and the people who are making them?that are triggering a revolution as potentially important to biology as Newton's insights were to physics.

Genres: Science

278 pages, Hardcover

First published August 24, 2006

Reviews

[Nilendu Misra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of biological scaling from a science writer who actually has a PhD from Cambridge. Fun read.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An altogether very interesting read, even though I found the 'theories' and 'science' of using one factor ie metabolism to explain everything from rate of growth (makes perfect sense) to diversity of life in a given area (dubious) not that convincing. Frustratingly, the book raises even more questions than what I hoped to be illuminating answers! Just shows how contentious and debateable grand theories still are in biology/nature. Merely using statistics to put a formula on any two given factors that happen to correlate is not really satisfying in explaining anything. As the author says, it is perhaps more useful in pointing out the outliers that fall outside of expectations, which warrant further investigation. I suspect we will better confirm such ideas and theories when (and if) we discover more planets with Life in which to compare with Earth's ecosystems.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating introduction to ideas emerging from the search for general laws or patterns in how living things use energy. Discussion centers on the field's development, focusing on prominent contributors in order to explore advances in understanding the regularities underlying such biological processes as metabolism, growth rates, life span, and patterns of diversity. It also covers some of the controversies concerning the whole enterprise of finding general "laws" in biology.