deodands

Life's Other Secret

Ian Stewart, Life's Other Secret.

Ian Stewart argues that mathematical explanations will be as important to future biology as genetic ones. Full of great examples, written in characteristically fluent Stewart style, and in the tradition of D'Arcy Thompson. But without some deeper understanding (pace Fox Keller) of why biologists haven't yet actually signed up to D'Arcy Thompson either, perhaps these mathematical hypotheses will remain comfort tales for our mathematics students and unemployed (sorry, newly interdisciplinary) physics postdocs.