Richard Dawkins popularised the view that organisms are merely vehicles built by ‘selfish genes’ for their own survival and reproduction. But the genome is inert: it does nothing without the directing activity of the organism. Is the organism using the genes, or are the genes creating the organism?

In this highly personal talk, Denis Noble takes us on a journey from tropical islands to imagined aliens on Jupiter, to show us that we need to shake off simple reductionism and realise, instead, that life is the outcome of complex, interactive processes. Rather than drivers of biological systems, genes emerge as organs of the cell, whose influence is shaped by context and culture.

By the end of this course, you will have learned:

• Why looking for the secrets of life purely in the genome is misguided
• Why genes are best understood as templates rather than programmes
• How Lamarck was right
• How life emerges from interactions at multiple levels
• Why the ‘self’ is best understood as a process, not an object in the brain

Nobe, D. (2006) The Music of Life, Oxford University Press