TheLogicalSideofLife

Derek Belanger The Logic of Life by Francois Jacob

Simply by walking down the street you bear witness to the result of one of the universes great miracles. Child birth, seemingly so simple is a complex and fascinating event which involves so many different chemicals firing, cells producing information, and just a pinch of luck. That is why life is so special, and this can be better understood after reading, __The Logic of Life__ by Francois Jacob. The book is, as the front cover of the book will tell you, a history of heredity. Today we see heredity as sort of a UPS of traits, with the package being red hair and the estimated time of arrival is your next son, but for some reason your niece just came out looking like Pippy Long Stocking. Heredity and the science of genetics is really a lot more than that, it’s so complex still to this day scientists are working on the human Genome trying to crack the case and figure out who done it, by done it I mean gave me this awful widows peak. Genetics, although advanced, is nowhere near a modern idea. As far back as the Old Testament genetics has been in the minds of man. Jacob attempted, in one part of the story, to color code his flock in interesting but futile methods. He attempted to use colored rods at the troughs of his sheep in the attempt that the mother sheep would give birth after drinking the water, thus transferring the color from the rods into that of the baby. Now, this may sound absurd but as Jacob puts it is these experiments that are replicated ad infinitum that led to the eventual discovery of modern genetics. Basically as we learned what didn’t work we learned more about ourselves we began to classify ourselves as “organized beings” but still this was mostly in name only as we had just scratched the surface. It was not until we first realized that we were made of living things, such as cells that we could truly spate ourselves from the inanimate objects. Buffont a pre-biologist, used the idea of sea salt being made of smaller and smaller cubes of sea salt thus logically, he defined, living organisms must be made up of smaller and smaller living things. This was revolutionary because once living beings were isolated from other objects such as chairs and doors they can be looked at, ironically, like a foundation. Living organisms don’t just appear in their state, but like a foundation are made of bricks laid one after another, such as generation to generation traits are passed down. This discovery, in fact, was so revolutionary that according to Jacob it created a whole new class of science it is the science of Biology. This new science as the name suggests was dedicated to finding the common characteristics of living organisms and to better understand what in fact life is. The next huge discovery of worth is the cell, now I could go on and on about how they discovered the cell as Jacob did in his book, but instead the aspects of why it was important matter slightly more. With the discovery of the cell we opened a huge door into the realm of reproduction and genetics. Before that time scientists were relying on centuries old knowledge and methods, not making much more advancements. With gradually improving microscopes scientists were able to discover through examination of sperm and egg that the birthing part was created on the cell level. Thus the idea of an embryo was created after fertilization. Brake through after breakthrough happened, Mendel and his pea plants and ultimately Charles Darwin and his all too famous theory of Evolution created what we now know as Genetics. Genetics as the book sees it is one of the most important things in science. I see it as one of the final frontiers that humanity has yet to explore and geneticists of today are the Lewis and Clarks of yesterday. In conclusion the book was very, dry finding myself getting lost on occasion Jacob is directing his book at a scientist, not an engineer most certainty I assume for a management major. Although I did find the genetics chapters interesting, even if I had to struggle to stay with the book and on occasion couldn’t actually retain any of the knowledge. Something of note I did notice is how in physics the scale of what were observing seems to have an effect on how u view an object, as well in biology and genetics on a macro scale things behave very differently than on a micro scale. As well, I pose this question to any who read, if evolution is dependent on traits then are we constantly evolving? Or is adapting to our surroundings the true definition of evolution and if we are ones to adapt our surroundings to ourselves have we passed the need to evolve or are we further evolving/devolving the earth and the rest of her inhabitants?