Dust jacket notes: "Francis Crick's place in history was assured when he and James Watson unraveled the celebrated double helix of DNA. Their discover of the structure of the genetic material of virtually all life on earth is regarded as the greatest biological advance of the twentieth century. Now, in What Mad Pursuit, Crick gives his own long-awaited account of the unique combination of choice and chance behind this epoch-making discovery, and how it, in turn, led to the cracking of the genetic code and the launching of the molecular biological revolution. 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' insisted Keats in 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' the poem from which What Mad Pursuit takes its title. Here, in an ebullient style that crackles with wit and life, Crick explores the more complex relationships between truth and beauty he has found in everything rom the roles of experiment and theory in science to the popular book, television, and movie versions of the double helix story. 'Elegance and a deep simplicity, ' he writes, 'are useful guides in physics. In biology such intellectual tools can be very misleading.' Working today, as always, at the frontier of human knowledge, this genius of modern science describes how he is applying the lessons of his pioneering discoveries in molecular biology to his latest pursuit of 'scientific gold' - understanding the mysteries of the brain."

What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery

Crick, Francis

Biographies & Memoirs

Basic Books

Candid, provocative, and disarming, this is the widely-praised memoir of the co-discoverer of the double helix of DNA.

Addresses the ultimate scientific question of the nature of life, using the hypothetical scenario that life originated on earth when a rocket carrying primitive spores was sent to earth by a higher civilization

Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

Touchstone/Simon & Schuster

The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (ISBN: 0684194317)

History & Philosophy

Charles Scribner`s Sons

The Nobel Prize-winning physicist who discovered the molecular structure of DNA examines what makes humans sentient beings, offering an analysis and description of how the brain sees.

The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Scribner

There is probably no one who has a deeper understanding of life's biochemical basis than Sir Francis Crick. In 1962, he won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, along with J. D. Watson and M. H. F. Wilkins, for breakthrough studies on the molecular structure of DNA. Just four years later he published this collection of popular lectures in which he explained the importance of this discovery in layperson's terms and emphasized its wide-reaching implications. Though written forty years ago, this succinct, lucid explication of the scientific facts remains the perfect primer for the lay reader curious about the ongoing biological revolution and is amazingly prescient in light of recent developments.Beginning with a critique of "vitalism," the notion that an intangible life force beyond the grasp of biology distinguishes living organisms from inanimate things, Crick argues that in all likelihood the complex mechanisms of DNA, RNA, and protein synthesis fully explain the phenomenon of life. While admitting that many details are uncertain and much remains unknown about the origins of life, he nonetheless maintains that chance mutations over time, in conjunction with the law of natural selection, offer the most rational explanation of the evolution of life on earth from inorganic precursors. Although few speak of vitalism today, the controversy that Crick addresses is still with us in the form of intelligent design, which suggests that biochemistry and evolution alone do not sufficiently explain the uniqueness of life.In his second lecture Crick explores the borderline between the organic and inorganic, presenting an elegantly clear description of DNA's basic structure and function in relation to RNA and myriad enzymes.In the final lecture, "The Prospect Before Us," he anticipates events and trends that have in fact come to pass in the past four decades: the increasing use of computer technology and robotics in mind-brain research, explorations into right-side vs. left-side uses of the brain, controversies surrounding the existence of the soul, the dead end of ESP investigations, and above all the daunting challenges of explaining consciousness in completely scientific terms.Of Molecules and Men is a fascinating, still-very-relevant discussion of many crucially important issues in life science.

Of Molecules and Men (Great Minds)

Prometheus

En estas animadas memorias, el autor nos narra, entre otras cosas, su vida &laquo,anterior a la doble hélice&raquo,, su implicación en el descubrimiento del mayor adelanto científico del siglo XX, la forma en la que la historia del DNA fue finalmente llevada a la pequeña pantalla y cómo la ruptura del código genético y el i

Qué loco propósito (Spanish Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Tusquets Editores S.A.

Busqueda Cientifica Del Alma/ The Soul's Scientific Search (Spanish Edition)

Debate Editorial

La vida misma : su origen y naturaleza (Spanish Edition)

FONDO DE CULTURA ECONOMICA*

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