Philip Ball

There was a time when curiosity was condemned. To be curious was to delve into matters that didn't concern you -- after all, the original sin stemmed from a desire for forbidden knowledge. Through curiosity our innocence was lost. Yet this has not deterred us.

"Biology is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Several aspects of the standard picture of how life works-the idea of the genome as a blueprint, of genes as instructions for building an organism, of proteins as precisely tailored molecular machines, of cells as entities with fixed identities, and more-have been exposed as incomplete, misleading, or wrong. In How Life Works, Philip Ball explores the new biology, revealing life to be a far...