Dance to the Tune of Life

Cover -- Half title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The Universe and the Principle of Relativity -- The Sky at Night -- Early Cosmologies -- The Copernican Revolution -- Galileo: Father of Modern Science -- The Earth from a Billion Miles -- Newton's Laws of Motion -- Nineteenth-Century Certainties -- Quantum Mechanics -- Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity -- Einstein's General Theory of Relativity -- Can We 'Feel' the Consequences of Relativity? -- Hubble's Deep Field Views -- Conclusions -- 2 Biological Scales and Levels -- The Sense of Scale -- Scales and Levels -- Atoms and Ions -- Molecules -- Molecules as Systems -- Networks -- Organelles -- Cells -- Tissues -- Organs -- Whole-Body Systems -- The Organism as a Whole -- Beyond Organisms -- Conclusions -- 3 Biological Networks -- Networks are not Diagrams! -- How Do Complex Structures Form? -- Biological Oscillators and Attractors -- Circadian Rhythm -- Cardiac Rhythm -- Gene Expression Patterns -- Synchronisation of Oscillators: Brainwaves -- Chance at the Heart of the Cell -- Conclusions -- 4 Nature and Origin of Cells -- The Medical Histology Class -- Cells as Carriages -- The Simplest Cells: Bacteria and Archaea -- Bacteria -- Archaea -- Eukaryotes: The Largest Organisms but the Smallest Domain -- The Cell Cycle -- Meiosis -- RNA and Other Early Worlds? -- How Cells Form Tissues -- The Nearly Cells: Viruses -- Tree, Networks or Rings of Life? -- The Death of Cells -- Conclusions -- 5 Blind Chance and Natural Selection -- Charles Darwin and his Predecessors -- Darwin on Lamarckism -- The Rise of Neo-Darwinism Leading to the Modern Synthesis -- Evolution and Genetics -- The Modern Synthesis -- Schrödinger and What is Life? -- Neo-Darwinism and the Central Dogma -- The Language of Neo-Darwinism -- The Language of Neo-Darwinism as a Whole