Life Unfolding

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Where did I come from Why do I have two arms but just one head How is my left leg the same size as my right one Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical How did my brain learn to learn Why must I die Questions like these remain biology s deepest and most ancient challenges They force us to confront a fundamental biological problem how can something as large and complex as a human body organize itself from the simplicity of a fertilized egg A convergence of ideas from embryology, genetics, physics, networks, and control theory has begun to provide real answers Based on the central principle of adaptive self organization, it explains how the interactions of many cells, and of the tiny molecular machines that run them, can organize tissue structures vastly larger than themselves, correcting errors as they go along and creating new layers of complexity where there were none before Life Unfolding tells the story of human development from egg to adult, from this perspective, showing how our whole understanding of how we come to be has been transformed in recent years Highlighting how embryological knowledge is being used to understand why bodies age and fail, Jamie A Davies explores the profound and fascinating impacts of our newfound knowledge. New Read Books Life Unfolding by Jamie A Davies – kino-fada.fr I continue to be amazed by what science pretends to understand Outside of mathematics and physics, predictions beyond the trivial are scarce and mere descriptions abound Materialists say that everything biology included boils down to physics and chemistry, but even chemistry is largely descriptive The physical properties of any new compound its boiling and crystalization points, for example can rarely be predicted with any accuracy from its chemical composition You just heat it and c I continue to be amazed by what science pretends to understand Outside of mathematics and physics, predictions beyond the trivial are scarce and mere descriptions abound Materialists say that everything biology included boils down to physics and chemistry, but even chemistry is largely descriptive The physical properties of any new compound its boiling and crystalization points, for example can rarely be predicted with any accuracy from its chemical composition You just heat it and cool it and take notes.Life scientists have struggled to translate the dynamics of life into an explanation that calls solely upon physics and chemistry If such an explanation were to stick, then there would be no need for a ghost to be resident in the machine It would be all machine There would be no elan vital, no deus ex machina, no force that is vital beyond that exerted by molecules and their motions And th...Well, now I feel silly that I didn t read this before my human biology exam It describes, in very careful detail, how the human body builds itself, beginning at the point an egg is fertilised It explains processes like cell division and gastrulation, and generally manages to make the whole complex process comprehensible Davies doesn t get hung up on quantum biology or how consciousness is generated, but instead focuses on the physical processes by which the human body grows.You may not find t Well, now I feel silly that I didn t read this before my human biology exam It describes, in very careful detail, how the human body builds itself, beginning at the point an egg is fertilised It explains processes like cell division and gastrulation, and generally manages to make the whole complex process comprehensible Davies doesn t get hung up on quantum biology or how consciousness is generated, but instead focuses on the physical pro...Human life is not a miracle A system of such complexity that we don t yet understand it does not mean that system is miraculous It s just really complex.We live in a time where we are starting to understand complex systems We have the computing tools, the intellectual frameworks from information and complexity sciences , and in this case the biological tools to start making sense of these intricate systems we can t understand fully Life Unfolding presents a communications centered view of Human life is not a miracle A system of such complexity that we don t yet understand it does not mean that system is miraculous It s just really complex.We live in a time where we are starting to understand complex systems We have the computing tools, the intellectual frameworks from information and complexity sciences , and in this case the biological tools to start making sense of these intricate systems we can t understand fully Life Unfolding presents a communications centered view of human development This doesn t mean it supplants genetic explanations in fact they are two sides of the same ideas but it does mean that many of the explanations here center on how proteins, cells and organs communicate enough information to create a hu...A brilliant book It manages to explain a very complicated process of develpment of the embroy by focusing on the fundamental mechanisms In particular it makes clear the fact that all forces working during development are in a certain sense local, that is, there is no overarching direction or plan Every cell is doing what is natural for it at that specific place given its internal and external context.A most important point that the book brings across is that the phrase gene X is responsible A brilliant book It manages to explain a very complicated process of develpment of the emb...In 1948 Hungarian American mathematician and polymath John von Neumann wondered how biology with reproducing organisms is possible He devised a mathematical concept called a cellular automaton a grid consisting of cells, each in one of a fixed number of discrete states, capable of going to a new state depending on its previous state and those of each neighbors, and described a self reproducing automaton In real life, the adult human body has about 200 types of cells organized in tissues and o In 1948 Hungarian American mathematician and polymath John von Neumann wondered how biology with reproducing organisms is possible He devised a mathematical concept called a cellular automaton a grid consisting of cells, each in one of a fixed number of discrete states, capable of going to a new state depending on its previous state and those of each neighbors, and described a self reproducing automaton In real life, the adult human body has about 200 types of cells organized in tissues and organs, which all grow from a single fertilized egg, and with another human body are capable of creating another fertil...This book is great It s about embryology The reader will learn in great detail about the genes which govern cell growth in different animals Like other aspects of biology much of the knowledge comes from what we learn when diseases cause development to go wrong There s also a lot to learn from moder...Great book in general that provides overview picture about organism creation, based on adaptive cell communication To me it was interesting to dig into some patterns that can be applicable to systems design, but here author provided just rough strokes, without many details, thus 4.5 5.Davies does a great job telling the events of human development as the story of how bodies build themselves The structure of the book is to go each chapter through an important stage of development or a particular part of the body, in chronological order You really get a sense of how a striking feature of developmental mechanisms is the way they are nested, building on each other as the body builds itself Partway through the book, I would have given it 3 stars, since some of the middle chap Davies does a great job telling the events of human development as the story of how bodies build themselves The structure of the book is to go each chapter through an important stage of development ...A delightfully written book that caters to a wide unspecialised audience you can skip some geeky bits without loosing the whole sense of the work who wants to learn a littleabout the mutlidisciplinary science approach to thr understanding of life how it begins and how it continues to grow and specialise while it is ALREADY functioning The general theme is about the how in self adaptive systems There are plenty and honestly op...Uma tima revis o de embriog nese Leve, sem muitos nomes complicados, bem integrativa O autor entende demais do assunto e sempre explica os fen menos atrav s de princ pios, em que contexto acontecem e com consequ ncias Quando fala por exemplo sobre sistema circulat rio, explica como os vasos se formam, a que sinal responde...

Life Unfolding
  • 07 January 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 299 pages
  • 0199673535
  • Jamie A Davies
  • Life Unfolding