WHAT life is and how we should treat it have provoked academic and popular interest since antiquity. For much of that time the gap between the discovered and the popularly 鈥渒nown鈥� was fairly bridgeable. The speed of biotechnological advance and the vigour of religious propaganda, argues Loomis, means this is no longer true. In this wide-ranging, easily accessible and thought-provoking book, he considers life and its implications from a cell biologist鈥檚 viewpoint, pursuing the ubiquity of life鈥檚 splendour and how we should relate to this philosophically, ethically and in public policy, covering issues from abortion to engineered evolution. This profound and beautifully explained celebration of life deserves wide readership.
Life as It Is: Biology for the public sphere
University of California Press
