BOOKS | SCIENCE
How Life Works by Philip Ball review — down with gene worship
You could read this defence of the wonders of biology as a 500-page drubbing of Richard Dawkins
On the mark: zebra stripes and human fingers are derived from proteins, not genes
GETTY IMAGES; JAY YUNO
The Sunday Times
You could read this book as a 500-page drubbing of Richard Dawkins. It is not a personal attack — although some barbed words are aimed — but it is a robust and sustained takedown of the “simplistic”, “distorted”, “barren” and “intellectually thin” notion that biology is all about the gene. There is very much more to life than that, according to Philip Ball. It might even have some meaning.
Ball is a ferociously gifted science writer who has covered everything from chemistry to Chinese history by way of Chartres cathedral. He is also an editor at the scientific journal Nature. In the past few decades, he says, biology has dethroned the gene. Now he wants to help popular culture to catch up.
That does rather
