Photo: Denis Noble, via Wikimedia Commons.Here is a new book from Oxford University biologist Denis Noble, Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity. He is one of the Third Way of Evolution folks, and no advocate of intelligent design.
Now read this comment on the book from Jos de Mul of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is likewise no proponent of ID:
In this elegantly written and personal book world-renowned physiologist and systems biologist Denis Noble effectively argues for a fundamental revision of the theory of evolution. Against the reductionist, gene-centered approach of Neo-Darwinism, which has dominated biology for more than a century, Noble passionately pleas for a more integrated approach. Massively supported by recent postgenomic and epigenetic empirical research, Dance to the Tune of Life deepens and synthesizes ideas Noble earlier developed in The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (2006) and subsequent writings. Just like Newtonian physics underwent a major transformation in the beginning of the 20th century due to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the life sciences are facing a no less fundamental transformation. Noble’s book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand this transformation.
That is strong language — a “fundamental revision” in evolutionary theory, against “reductionist…neo-Darwinism,” comparable to how “Newtonian physics underwent a major transformation in the beginning of the 20th century.” Meanwhile fake science news out of the mainstream media and the National Center for Science Education assures us that evolutionary thinking is established as firmly as the Pillars of Hercules.
The book was published in January by Cambridge University Press. Don’t believe me? It’s all right on the Amazon page. Noble was among the organizers and participants at the Royal Society meeting in London that we’ve talked so much about here.
Evolutionary biology is in a state of ferment verging, in some quarters, on open rebellion. Don’t let Darwin apologists tell you otherwise.
Photo: Denis Noble, courtesy of Denis Noble [Copyrighted free use], via Wikimedia Commons.
H/t: Günter Bechly.