Volume 3, Number 10 · December 31, 1964
The Age of Biology
By Stephen Toulmin
New Patterns in Genetics and Development
by C.H. Waddington
Columbia, 271 pp., $10.00
The Nature of Life
by C.H. Waddington
Altheneum, 136 pp., $4.00
The Life of the Cell: Its Nature, Origin and Basic Development
by J.A.V. Butler
Basic Books, 167 pp., $4.50
The Biochemical Approach to Life
by F.R. Jevons
Basic Books, 184 pp., $4.50
Genetics and Man
by C.D. Darlington
Macmillan, 165 pp., $7.50
Heredity and the Nature of Man
by Theodosius Dobzhansky
Harcourt, Brace & World, 165 pp., $4.75
These days, DNA and RNA are news. The fame of these 'nucleic acids'—so significant for contemporary genetics—is a curious fact, and one that takes some explaining; but it should not (I believe) be considered in isolation. For, if we look back over the last ten or fifteen years, we can see that it is only one aspect of a more widespread change, which in different ways affects the whole style of contemporary life and thought. To be deliberately sweeping: if the dominant sciences (and sources of influence) during the first half of the twentieth century were mathematical and physical ones, the second half of the century (by contrast) looks like being a biological age.
Review, 3000 words
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