So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World (First Edition)

Parthasarathy, Raghuveer

ISBN 10: 0691200408 / ISBN 13: 9780691200408

Published by Princeton University Press, 2022

About this Item

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. First edition. First printing, with full number line. Hardcover. Full oatmeal-colored cloth, with black spine lettering. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Publisher's original price intact on jacket flap ($35.00). Comes with archival-quality mylar dust jacket protector. Octavo, 262 pages with index. This book explores how a shared set of physical principles underlies the vast diversity of living organisms, revealing the hidden unity behind nature's complexity. Raghuveer Parthasarathy, a biophysicist, examines four key principles self-assembly, regulatory circuits, predictable randomness, and scaling that shape life from molecules to elephants, and discusses how biophysics informs emerging biotechnologies like gene editing and artificial organ growth. Illustrated throughout with the author's original watercolors and drawings. The author is a professor of physics at the University of Oregon whose research focuses on biophysics and the mechanics of living systems. This is his first book.

Seller Inventory # Annex-UP-Princeton

Bibliographic Details

• Title: So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World (First Edition)
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691200408
• ISBN 13: 9780691200408
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science

About this title

Synopsis

A biophysicist reveals the hidden unity behind nature’s breathtaking complexity

The form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it. So Simple a Beginning shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering.

Raghuveer Parthasarathy explains how four basic principles—self-assembly, regulatory circuits, predictable randomness, and scaling—shape the machinery of life on scales ranging from microscopic molecules to gigantic elephants. He describes how biophysics is helping to unlock the secrets of a host of natural phenomena, such as how your limbs know to form at the proper places, and why humans need lungs but ants do not. Parthasarathy explores how the cutting-edge biotechnologies of tomorrow could enable us to alter living things in ways both subtle and profound.

Featuring dozens of original watercolors and drawings by the author, this sweeping tour of biophysics offers astonishing new perspectives on how the wonders of life can arise from so simple a beginning.

About the Author

Raghuveer Parthasarathy is an Alec and Kay Keith Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon, where he is a member of the Institute of Molecular Biology and the Materials Science Institute. He lives in Eugene, Oregon. Website eighteenthelephant.com Twitter @RParthasarathy7