I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his visions, 27 Aug 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).

The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.

Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.

My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.

The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.

1. A Life of Erwin Schrodinger (Canto Original) (Canto original series)
2. Statistical Thermodynamics
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto Original): AND Science and Humanism (Canto original series)
4. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics) (Cambridge Science Classics)
5. Science and Humanism Physics in Our Time
6. Science and the Human Temperment.
7. My view of the world

What Is Life?, 08 Sep 2004
What Is Life?
Erwin Schrödinger
Cambridge University Press (2002)

The structure of DNA and the genetic code may have alluded us for some time more if Crick had not read Erwin Schrödinger's "What Is Life?" [1]. The research lead that Crick got by doing so was how a small set of repeating elements could give rise to a large number of combinatorial products, a mathematical relationship that Schrödinger illustrated using the Morse Code, based on an idea that he had actually got from the visionary work of Max Delbrück.

Delbrück, Schrödinger and Crick were physicists with an enthusiasm for tackling the unknown for the natural world. Crick's own motivation came directly from reading "What Is Life?" [2]. It seemed reasonable to make the cross-over as the infant field of biochemistry was bound to be governed by the same chemical and physical laws revealed in other, non-biological, disciplines. This was especially true given the progressive focus of biology on the increasingly small, until an effective convergence of scales in the studies of the biologically relevant on the biologically irrelevant. Hence the justification for Schrödinger's unspecific book title.

Although some of the notions in the book have been superseded by modern science, this remains a classic, written with great insight and modesty (Schrödinger downplays his potential as a biologist), and is worth the read if only as a portal in to the minds of those luminary workers.

By the time Watson and Crick were piecing together the jigsaw that would lead to their grand discovery, the far-reaching potential of Schrödinger's code script had been aligned with Chargaff's finding of a variable sequence of nucleotide bases, and the stage was set for that immortal terminal sentence, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

-------------
[1] Francis Crick (1989) What Mad Pursuit. Penguin.
[2] James Watson (1981) The Double Helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his visions, 27 Aug 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).

The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.

Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.

My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.

The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.

1. A Life of Erwin Schrodinger (Canto Original) (Canto original series)
2. Statistical Thermodynamics
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto Original): AND Science and Humanism (Canto original series)
4. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics) (Cambridge Science Classics)
5. Science and Humanism Physics in Our Time
6. Science and the Human Temperment.
7. My view of the world

What Is Life?, 08 Sep 2004
What Is Life?
Erwin Schrödinger
Cambridge University Press (2002)

The structure of DNA and the genetic code may have alluded us for some time more if Crick had not read Erwin Schrödinger's "What Is Life?" [1]. The research lead that Crick got by doing so was how a small set of repeating elements could give rise to a large number of combinatorial products, a mathematical relationship that Schrödinger illustrated using the Morse Code, based on an idea that he had actually got from the visionary work of Max Delbrück.

Delbrück, Schrödinger and Crick were physicists with an enthusiasm for tackling the unknown for the natural world. Crick's own motivation came directly from reading "What Is Life?" [2]. It seemed reasonable to make the cross-over as the infant field of biochemistry was bound to be governed by the same chemical and physical laws revealed in other, non-biological, disciplines. This was especially true given the progressive focus of biology on the increasingly small, until an effective convergence of scales in the studies of the biologically relevant on the biologically irrelevant. Hence the justification for Schrödinger's unspecific book title.

Although some of the notions in the book have been superseded by modern science, this remains a classic, written with great insight and modesty (Schrödinger downplays his potential as a biologist), and is worth the read if only as a portal in to the minds of those luminary workers.

By the time Watson and Crick were piecing together the jigsaw that would lead to their grand discovery, the far-reaching potential of Schrödinger's code script had been aligned with Chargaff's finding of a variable sequence of nucleotide bases, and the stage was set for that immortal terminal sentence, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

-------------
[1] Francis Crick (1989) What Mad Pursuit. Penguin.
[2] James Watson (1981) The Double Helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

simply a marvellous exposition of ideas, 21 Apr 2007
I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

An accessible version of a classic, 23 Mar 2007
Peter Medawar called Growth and Form a classic of biological literature. This new edition makes it an accessible classic. Originally it was two volumes and over 1000 pages this edited volume and it was a challenging read. This new edition has kept Thompsons fantastic illustrations and removed some of the failings of the original text updating what is sure to become a classic of "systems biology"




A science classic. The meaning of form. Invention of chaos, 13 May 1999
A science masterpiece. Written during WWI, revised during WW2. An amazing amount of knowledge, viewed through the eyes of an incredibly perceptive scholar and scientist. Early 20th century writing style. Greek, Latin, French and German citations. From the prefatory note: "an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods which are the common places of physical science, which are by no means novel in their application to natural history, but which nevertheless naturalists are little accustomed to employ." Thompson's theory of transformations is covered in the last chapter.

I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his visions, 27 Aug 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).

The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.

Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.

My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.

The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.

1. A Life of Erwin Schrodinger (Canto Original) (Canto original series)
2. Statistical Thermodynamics
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto Original): AND Science and Humanism (Canto original series)
4. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics) (Cambridge Science Classics)
5. Science and Humanism Physics in Our Time
6. Science and the Human Temperment.
7. My view of the world

What Is Life?, 08 Sep 2004
What Is Life?
Erwin Schrödinger
Cambridge University Press (2002)

The structure of DNA and the genetic code may have alluded us for some time more if Crick had not read Erwin Schrödinger's "What Is Life?" [1]. The research lead that Crick got by doing so was how a small set of repeating elements could give rise to a large number of combinatorial products, a mathematical relationship that Schrödinger illustrated using the Morse Code, based on an idea that he had actually got from the visionary work of Max Delbrück.

Delbrück, Schrödinger and Crick were physicists with an enthusiasm for tackling the unknown for the natural world. Crick's own motivation came directly from reading "What Is Life?" [2]. It seemed reasonable to make the cross-over as the infant field of biochemistry was bound to be governed by the same chemical and physical laws revealed in other, non-biological, disciplines. This was especially true given the progressive focus of biology on the increasingly small, until an effective convergence of scales in the studies of the biologically relevant on the biologically irrelevant. Hence the justification for Schrödinger's unspecific book title.

Although some of the notions in the book have been superseded by modern science, this remains a classic, written with great insight and modesty (Schrödinger downplays his potential as a biologist), and is worth the read if only as a portal in to the minds of those luminary workers.

By the time Watson and Crick were piecing together the jigsaw that would lead to their grand discovery, the far-reaching potential of Schrödinger's code script had been aligned with Chargaff's finding of a variable sequence of nucleotide bases, and the stage was set for that immortal terminal sentence, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

-------------
[1] Francis Crick (1989) What Mad Pursuit. Penguin.
[2] James Watson (1981) The Double Helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

simply a marvellous exposition of ideas, 21 Apr 2007
I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

An accessible version of a classic, 23 Mar 2007
Peter Medawar called Growth and Form a classic of biological literature. This new edition makes it an accessible classic. Originally it was two volumes and over 1000 pages this edited volume and it was a challenging read. This new edition has kept Thompsons fantastic illustrations and removed some of the failings of the original text updating what is sure to become a classic of "systems biology"




A science classic. The meaning of form. Invention of chaos, 13 May 1999
A science masterpiece. Written during WWI, revised during WW2. An amazing amount of knowledge, viewed through the eyes of an incredibly perceptive scholar and scientist. Early 20th century writing style. Greek, Latin, French and German citations. From the prefatory note: "an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods which are the common places of physical science, which are by no means novel in their application to natural history, but which nevertheless naturalists are little accustomed to employ." Thompson's theory of transformations is covered in the last chapter.

A very indepth technical book on dog develpment ., 01 Dec 1998
This is a very in-depth and technical book on the early social development of dogs and the effects of socialization and training. It is a very good book for anyone who is serious about breeding dogs.

I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his visions, 27 Aug 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).

The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.

Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.

My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.

The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.

1. A Life of Erwin Schrodinger (Canto Original) (Canto original series)
2. Statistical Thermodynamics
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto Original): AND Science and Humanism (Canto original series)
4. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics) (Cambridge Science Classics)
5. Science and Humanism Physics in Our Time
6. Science and the Human Temperment.
7. My view of the world

What Is Life?, 08 Sep 2004
What Is Life?
Erwin Schrödinger
Cambridge University Press (2002)

The structure of DNA and the genetic code may have alluded us for some time more if Crick had not read Erwin Schrödinger's "What Is Life?" [1]. The research lead that Crick got by doing so was how a small set of repeating elements could give rise to a large number of combinatorial products, a mathematical relationship that Schrödinger illustrated using the Morse Code, based on an idea that he had actually got from the visionary work of Max Delbrück.

Delbrück, Schrödinger and Crick were physicists with an enthusiasm for tackling the unknown for the natural world. Crick's own motivation came directly from reading "What Is Life?" [2]. It seemed reasonable to make the cross-over as the infant field of biochemistry was bound to be governed by the same chemical and physical laws revealed in other, non-biological, disciplines. This was especially true given the progressive focus of biology on the increasingly small, until an effective convergence of scales in the studies of the biologically relevant on the biologically irrelevant. Hence the justification for Schrödinger's unspecific book title.

Although some of the notions in the book have been superseded by modern science, this remains a classic, written with great insight and modesty (Schrödinger downplays his potential as a biologist), and is worth the read if only as a portal in to the minds of those luminary workers.

By the time Watson and Crick were piecing together the jigsaw that would lead to their grand discovery, the far-reaching potential of Schrödinger's code script had been aligned with Chargaff's finding of a variable sequence of nucleotide bases, and the stage was set for that immortal terminal sentence, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

-------------
[1] Francis Crick (1989) What Mad Pursuit. Penguin.
[2] James Watson (1981) The Double Helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

simply a marvellous exposition of ideas, 21 Apr 2007
I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

An accessible version of a classic, 23 Mar 2007
Peter Medawar called Growth and Form a classic of biological literature. This new edition makes it an accessible classic. Originally it was two volumes and over 1000 pages this edited volume and it was a challenging read. This new edition has kept Thompsons fantastic illustrations and removed some of the failings of the original text updating what is sure to become a classic of "systems biology"




A science classic. The meaning of form. Invention of chaos, 13 May 1999
A science masterpiece. Written during WWI, revised during WW2. An amazing amount of knowledge, viewed through the eyes of an incredibly perceptive scholar and scientist. Early 20th century writing style. Greek, Latin, French and German citations. From the prefatory note: "an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods which are the common places of physical science, which are by no means novel in their application to natural history, but which nevertheless naturalists are little accustomed to employ." Thompson's theory of transformations is covered in the last chapter.

A very indepth technical book on dog develpment ., 01 Dec 1998
This is a very in-depth and technical book on the early social development of dogs and the effects of socialization and training. It is a very good book for anyone who is serious about breeding dogs.

Good, but a few niggles., 06 Aug 2007
This book contains the essentials of scientific manuscript preparation. As many today obtain their first degree without ever having seen a primary publication, books like this one have become even more essential fare for any PhD student. Gustavii is right about many things. Most importantly, he is right to wonder why so many authors (and editors!) prefer summary data graphs over individual data graphs. He is right about grouped column charts. His discussion of line versus column graphs is also spot-on. It is surprising, then, that he seems to argue *against* box-and-whisker graphs; it becomes clear on the next page, however, that he is in favour of such graphs, but disapproves of the ridiculous width these boxes are given in standard software. I am afraid Gustavii's typical reader will come away from this advice thinking that such graphs are to be avoided. However, on the whole I wish more authors would heed what Gustavii has to say about graphs and tables.

The chapters on authorship, title, abstract and so on are standard fare. It is somewhat discouraging that these things need to be spelled out at all, but, alas, it is, and Gustavii does as good a job as any other number of books in this vein. New to me was his name for the nasty trick of denying earlier work importance or precedence by mentioning it fleetingly, once, deep in the Discussion section. Gustavii tells us that we should not do this, but I rather fear he is dispensing advice to tomorrow's charlatans. The discussion of slashes versus negative exponents is correct, but fails to explain why one is better than the other. Perhaps Gustavii felt that telling biomedical researchers that division is equivalent to subtraction in the exponent does little to enlighten them.

The discussion on common statistical errors is generally good. There is a section entitled "Using mean when median is meant" which misleadingly suggests that authors who make the mistake somehow intend to report the median but end up using the mean, when the problem is, of course, that they are simply not familiar with percentiles. The discussion of confidence intervals is also close but no cigar. Then again, the discussion of abuse of SEM is spot-on and there is a very good section on reporting the effects on risk. Gustavii mentions the public clamour which can result when the relative change in a risk is reported instead of the actual change of itself or, better yet, the Number Needed to Treat. In the vile scare-mongering tabloid environment of the UK, this advice will, sadly, continue to go unheeded.

The parts on manuscript preparation reflects current standard practice without a critical discussion of its grave flaws. I for one do not understand why manuscripts have to be double or triple spaced at the review stage (except that it perhaps discourages idiotic mark-up shenanigans at the other extreme). I also do not understand why people use Word instead of LaTeX, which does away with the need to control authors' typographic gormlessness through restrictive formatting rules. Gustavii tells us "The second most frequent fault in papers submitted is unnumbered pages." Why does this fault occur at all? Because we are hell-bent on remaining in the DTP Stone Age.

The chapter on the review process tries to strike a balance between training the next generation up to be good citizens and preparing them for harsh reality. Gustavii claims referees are honorable with few exceptions, but gives no hard data on how few that is, or what happens if you fall foul of one of these "extremely rare" evil-doers. Gustavii assures us that self-plagiarism will lead to a life sentence (presumably a publication ban). Well, no. I know an emiment mathematician who gets away with it again and again.

Some more niggles: New Scientist is not a prestigious magazine, but a popular publication, and different editorial rules apply (I disagree with the example, not the particular point Gustavii makes). Finally, spelling mistakes and wrong English usage are embarrassing in a book on how to get it right.

I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his visions, 27 Aug 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).

The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.

Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.

My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.

The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.

1. A Life of Erwin Schrodinger (Canto Original) (Canto original series)
2. Statistical Thermodynamics
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto Original): AND Science and Humanism (Canto original series)
4. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics) (Cambridge Science Classics)
5. Science and Humanism Physics in Our Time
6. Science and the Human Temperment.
7. My view of the world

What Is Life?, 08 Sep 2004
What Is Life?
Erwin Schrödinger
Cambridge University Press (2002)

The structure of DNA and the genetic code may have alluded us for some time more if Crick had not read Erwin Schrödinger's "What Is Life?" [1]. The research lead that Crick got by doing so was how a small set of repeating elements could give rise to a large number of combinatorial products, a mathematical relationship that Schrödinger illustrated using the Morse Code, based on an idea that he had actually got from the visionary work of Max Delbrück.

Delbrück, Schrödinger and Crick were physicists with an enthusiasm for tackling the unknown for the natural world. Crick's own motivation came directly from reading "What Is Life?" [2]. It seemed reasonable to make the cross-over as the infant field of biochemistry was bound to be governed by the same chemical and physical laws revealed in other, non-biological, disciplines. This was especially true given the progressive focus of biology on the increasingly small, until an effective convergence of scales in the studies of the biologically relevant on the biologically irrelevant. Hence the justification for Schrödinger's unspecific book title.

Although some of the notions in the book have been superseded by modern science, this remains a classic, written with great insight and modesty (Schrödinger downplays his potential as a biologist), and is worth the read if only as a portal in to the minds of those luminary workers.

By the time Watson and Crick were piecing together the jigsaw that would lead to their grand discovery, the far-reaching potential of Schrödinger's code script had been aligned with Chargaff's finding of a variable sequence of nucleotide bases, and the stage was set for that immortal terminal sentence, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

-------------
[1] Francis Crick (1989) What Mad Pursuit. Penguin.
[2] James Watson (1981) The Double Helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

simply a marvellous exposition of ideas, 21 Apr 2007
I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

An accessible version of a classic, 23 Mar 2007
Peter Medawar called Growth and Form a classic of biological literature. This new edition makes it an accessible classic. Originally it was two volumes and over 1000 pages this edited volume and it was a challenging read. This new edition has kept Thompsons fantastic illustrations and removed some of the failings of the original text updating what is sure to become a classic of "systems biology"




A science classic. The meaning of form. Invention of chaos, 13 May 1999
A science masterpiece. Written during WWI, revised during WW2. An amazing amount of knowledge, viewed through the eyes of an incredibly perceptive scholar and scientist. Early 20th century writing style. Greek, Latin, French and German citations. From the prefatory note: "an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods which are the common places of physical science, which are by no means novel in their application to natural history, but which nevertheless naturalists are little accustomed to employ." Thompson's theory of transformations is covered in the last chapter.

A very indepth technical book on dog develpment ., 01 Dec 1998
This is a very in-depth and technical book on the early social development of dogs and the effects of socialization and training. It is a very good book for anyone who is serious about breeding dogs.

Good, but a few niggles., 06 Aug 2007
This book contains the essentials of scientific manuscript preparation. As many today obtain their first degree without ever having seen a primary publication, books like this one have become even more essential fare for any PhD student. Gustavii is right about many things. Most importantly, he is right to wonder why so many authors (and editors!) prefer summary data graphs over individual data graphs. He is right about grouped column charts. His discussion of line versus column graphs is also spot-on. It is surprising, then, that he seems to argue *against* box-and-whisker graphs; it becomes clear on the next page, however, that he is in favour of such graphs, but disapproves of the ridiculous width these boxes are given in standard software. I am afraid Gustavii's typical reader will come away from this advice thinking that such graphs are to be avoided. However, on the whole I wish more authors would heed what Gustavii has to say about graphs and tables.

The chapters on authorship, title, abstract and so on are standard fare. It is somewhat discouraging that these things need to be spelled out at all, but, alas, it is, and Gustavii does as good a job as any other number of books in this vein. New to me was his name for the nasty trick of denying earlier work importance or precedence by mentioning it fleetingly, once, deep in the Discussion section. Gustavii tells us that we should not do this, but I rather fear he is dispensing advice to tomorrow's charlatans. The discussion of slashes versus negative exponents is correct, but fails to explain why one is better than the other. Perhaps Gustavii felt that telling biomedical researchers that division is equivalent to subtraction in the exponent does little to enlighten them.

The discussion on common statistical errors is generally good. There is a section entitled "Using mean when median is meant" which misleadingly suggests that authors who make the mistake somehow intend to report the median but end up using the mean, when the problem is, of course, that they are simply not familiar with percentiles. The discussion of confidence intervals is also close but no cigar. Then again, the discussion of abuse of SEM is spot-on and there is a very good section on reporting the effects on risk. Gustavii mentions the public clamour which can result when the relative change in a risk is reported instead of the actual change of itself or, better yet, the Number Needed to Treat. In the vile scare-mongering tabloid environment of the UK, this advice will, sadly, continue to go unheeded.

The parts on manuscript preparation reflects current standard practice without a critical discussion of its grave flaws. I for one do not understand why manuscripts have to be double or triple spaced at the review stage (except that it perhaps discourages idiotic mark-up shenanigans at the other extreme). I also do not understand why people use Word instead of LaTeX, which does away with the need to control authors' typographic gormlessness through restrictive formatting rules. Gustavii tells us "The second most frequent fault in papers submitted is unnumbered pages." Why does this fault occur at all? Because we are hell-bent on remaining in the DTP Stone Age.

The chapter on the review process tries to strike a balance between training the next generation up to be good citizens and preparing them for harsh reality. Gustavii claims referees are honorable with few exceptions, but gives no hard data on how few that is, or what happens if you fall foul of one of these "extremely rare" evil-doers. Gustavii assures us that self-plagiarism will lead to a life sentence (presumably a publication ban). Well, no. I know an emiment mathematician who gets away with it again and again.

Some more niggles: New Scientist is not a prestigious magazine, but a popular publication, and different editorial rules apply (I disagree with the example, not the particular point Gustavii makes). Finally, spelling mistakes and wrong English usage are embarrassing in a book on how to get it right.



Makes molecular, development and biochemical biology easy, 18 Jan 2006
I would have been lost without this book. I used it so much during my biology degree that the spine has fallen apart. It was great for short definitions, like what are PH domains or how does the Complement cascade work, or what DAG-lipase does. It also gives a list of all Restriction Enzymes, current database URLs for DNA/ protein sequences. It explained the most complex protein interactions with clarity and precision. It is better than any other text book and covers biomedical, biochemical, biophysical definitions. I would not have got a first class honours degree without it.

If the publishers read this, I am waiting for the next edition to come out.

Love it., 04 Mar 2005
One of my lecturers once told me that molecular biology really isn't that difficult, it's a language that you need to learn. As an undergraduat student of molecular biology this book is the one I use the most. It gives clear, concise and understandable explanations to most of the terms that has me puzzeled. Extremely useful!

one to keep handy when reading the scientific literature, 15 Jul 2003
As someone involved in biochemical research, I spend loads of time reading a variety of life science journals. Just keeping up with the latest research is hard enough, but as my areas of interest become ever larger and intermeshed with other disciplines such as medicine and physics, I've found myself delving into this book more and more. But the pace of research is also a problem for a book like this, because to remain useful, new editions cannot appear fast enough to keep up with the latest batch of techniques, genes and proteins. Ultimately an Internet version of this book that gets updated on a regular basis would be the most useful. Never the less, once you get in the habit of using this dictionary, you'll want to keep it nearby when you're browsing the life science literature. Is this book good value? I think it's expensive compared to all other books, but well priced for an academic textbook. I find that using this book is still more rapid and direct than browsing the web for the definition of a word I don't know, and the brief definition given in this book is a good starting point for hunting down more detailed information.

Indispensable aid to the study of molecular biology!, 18 Jun 2001
From the novice undergraduate to the expert researcher, this book is a great at giving precise definitions of almost all the terms you will encouter in biochemisrty and molecular biology. Simply explained, the definitions are also great for jogging the memory if some topics have become a bit rusty. The most useful resource book I have bought..a scientist's dream dictionary!I'd definitely recommend it for anyone involved in Biochemistry and its various disciplines.

I wish I hadn't bought this, 20 May 2008
Like other reviewers I find this dictionary constantly frustrating. It is not comprehensive, and more often than not it doesn't have the term I am looking for, meaning I have to resort to the internet or textbooks. For example, it has the definition for 'jaw' but lacks 'qualia' and 'geosmins'. Not recommended for anyone above A level.

a little too basic for a Biology BSc., 22 Jan 2008
I have found this Biology dictionary to be lacking many important terms in the second year of my degree, and I have generally been disappointed with it. I believe it is fine for A-levels, and acceptable in a first year biology degree; but this needs companion texts for later degree years as modules advance.

Maintain that resting potential, now!, 01 Dec 2006
The question was: what (or whatever) maintains the resting membrane potential nowadays! I always thought that it was the sodium pump (or Na K ATPase etc.). Recently, I heard: No, it is not the sodium pump that maintains the resting potential. So I checked both the Oxford and the Penguin Dictionaries of Biology. Oxford says that the resting potential is maintained by the sodium pump; however, the Penguin says it is the leaky potassium channels, and sodium pump plays a slight role. Well, it is one of those academic debates, it would seem--which really mean nothing--because nothing is at stake! The debate is from confusing maintenance, recovery, and repair--perhaps. Is it the resting potential (a thing being maintained) or is it the repolarization after a depolarization (a thing in recovery) that we are talking about? Is maintenance still maintenance if you spend energy in extruding the smaller atoms out--well: a running car can be maintained only by spending money? Perhaps, after all, it is only the usual confusion of the frogs in a well: they can only see the stars in their own horizons. The whole biological process has several components, and to know which is the one--well, just take one out and see if the process holds and functions. Which brick is the most important in a wall? Clearly, the truth is never simple, and possibly there is no such thing as the truth. Things evolve using all of the components--and are what they are. So, I guess it is always the context and it is always relative: point of view etc. There is no simple correct answer because the question is incorrectly formulated--without the necessary context. What is more important in the running of a car: the engine or the gas? So get both the Oxford and Penguin--they complement, and both are useful when viewed and understood in the right context: neither can replace the textbook; and no textbook replaces all the source materials--but you need to start somewhere. For a rich fantasy life read Ayul Zamir's Intern Beth. Now, whatever maintains that resting membrane potential!

What not to buy, 13 Dec 2005
if your looking for a dictionary for a degree course this would not be it. many biological terms and definitions are not listed. your better off buying either the henderson biological dictionary or the penguin one, as these have far more terms and are listed in a more clear and consise manner.

Just what you need, 02 Jul 2005
This is an excellent dictionary for any biology student in school or university. Contains clear direct definitions of words and has a clear lay-out also, a must buy for the biologist of today.

Erwin Schrödinger: The man and his visions, 27 Aug 2008
This is another great work of Erwin Schrodinger which gives an insight into the biology of life from a physicist's perspective that inspired scientists like; Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA, J.B.S. Haldane, and Roger Penrose. It is clear from this work and other books of Schrodinger that he was one of the few physicists who deeply thought of the inner most secrets of life. This book is divided into two parts: What's Life (7 chapters) and Mind and Matter (6 chapters).

The physicist's most dreaded weapon, the mathematical deduction can not be used for life because it is too complex to be accessible to equations. The orderliness required for the preservation of life does not come by the random heat motions of atoms and molecules, but statistical averages that provide order. Schrodinger asks a simple question; why is life made of so many atoms and not just a few. He offers three examples; higher magnetic fields, increase in molecular population and the error introduced into a reaction rate constant or any other physical parameter would be far too great if only few molecules are involved to form life. Hence orderliness, and of course evolution and diversity of life, requires very large population of molecules.

The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories; all existing objectively and all scientific knowledge is based on sense of perception and nonetheless the scientific views of material processes formed in this way lack all sensual qualities and can not account for the latter. Theories that are developed from scientific observations of experiments never account for sensual qualities. The sentient, percipient and thinking ego does not figure anywhere in our world picture, because it is itself the world picture. It is identified with the whole and not part of it. The physical world lacks all the sensual qualities that go to make the subject of cognizance. It is colorless, soundless, and impalpable. The world is deprived of everything that makes sense in its in relation to the consciously contemplating, perceiving, and feeling the subject; no personal god can form part of world model that has only became accessible at the cost of removing everything personal from it. God is missing from spacetime picture like sense of perception or ones own personality. Upanisads (Hindu Scripture) states that Atman = Brahman, the personal self equal the all comprehending eternal self. Consciousness never experienced in plural only in the singular, and plurality is merely a series of different aspect of one soul and one conscious produced by a deception (Maya). There is no multiplicity of minds; in reality and truth there is only one mind.

Before and after is not a quality of the world we perceive but pertains to the perceiving mind and don't imply the notion of space and time. After relativity, the notion of before and after reside on the cause and effect relationship. The general directedness of all happenings is explained by the mechanical or statistical theory of heat. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that order changes to disorder but not disorder to order, and time travels in one direction from past to future, but not future to past. The statistical theory of time has a stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than theory of relativity. The latter presupposes unidirectional flow of time while statistical theory constructs from order of events.

My body functions according to laws of nature, but I direct body motions. The word "I" means to state that I who control the motion of the atoms and molecules according to the Laws of Nature. The uncertainty principle and the lack of causal connection in nature introduce certain features into physical reality. For example, we can not make any factual statement about a physical system without interacting with it which would change the physical state of the system. This explains why no complete description of any physical object is ever possible. These laws have pushed the boundary between the subject and object. In fact subject and object are only one, and no barrier exists. It is the same element that goes to compose my mind and the world. The situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of cross references between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.

The last chapter gives brief autobiographical sketches of Schrodinger translated by his granddaughter. Schrödinger was deeply philosophical with strong family: He loved and respected his parents. His strong interest in physics and Vedanta philosophy (one of the six schools of Hindu Philosophy) is apparent, but he shy's away from writing about his complex personal life that involved many women and numerous extramarital affairs.

1. A Life of Erwin Schrodinger (Canto Original) (Canto original series)
2. Statistical Thermodynamics
3. 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism' (Canto Original): AND Science and Humanism (Canto original series)
4. Space-Time Structure (Cambridge Science Classics) (Cambridge Science Classics)
5. Science and Humanism Physics in Our Time
6. Science and the Human Temperment.
7. My view of the world

What Is Life?, 08 Sep 2004
What Is Life?
Erwin Schrödinger
Cambridge University Press (2002)

The structure of DNA and the genetic code may have alluded us for some time more if Crick had not read Erwin Schrödinger's "What Is Life?" [1]. The research lead that Crick got by doing so was how a small set of repeating elements could give rise to a large number of combinatorial products, a mathematical relationship that Schrödinger illustrated using the Morse Code, based on an idea that he had actually got from the visionary work of Max Delbrück.

Delbrück, Schrödinger and Crick were physicists with an enthusiasm for tackling the unknown for the natural world. Crick's own motivation came directly from reading "What Is Life?" [2]. It seemed reasonable to make the cross-over as the infant field of biochemistry was bound to be governed by the same chemical and physical laws revealed in other, non-biological, disciplines. This was especially true given the progressive focus of biology on the increasingly small, until an effective convergence of scales in the studies of the biologically relevant on the biologically irrelevant. Hence the justification for Schrödinger's unspecific book title.

Although some of the notions in the book have been superseded by modern science, this remains a classic, written with great insight and modesty (Schrödinger downplays his potential as a biologist), and is worth the read if only as a portal in to the minds of those luminary workers.

By the time Watson and Crick were piecing together the jigsaw that would lead to their grand discovery, the far-reaching potential of Schrödinger's code script had been aligned with Chargaff's finding of a variable sequence of nucleotide bases, and the stage was set for that immortal terminal sentence, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

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[1] Francis Crick (1989) What Mad Pursuit. Penguin.
[2] James Watson (1981) The Double Helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

simply a marvellous exposition of ideas, 21 Apr 2007
I heard about this marvellous book as I was reading in the typical popular science literature years ago now but its almost impossible to avoid contact with this tome of the archetypal polymath D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. A remarkable man with a wonderful open view of science and the, what's now called, interdisciplinarian approach to the world. Refreshingly full of new ideas especially for his day and even now where conservatism as usual is the norm in scientific circles. I hope many scientists read this book and see not just a curiosity but a representation of a whole approach to the world of nature. I will never forget the first time I read the chapter on coordinate transformations in animal shapes, today's schools simply do not inspire in this way and its time this changed. The prescence of this book, well read, on any person's bookshelf is a must.

An accessible version of a classic, 23 Mar 2007
Peter Medawar called Growth and Form a classic of biological literature. This new edition makes it an accessible classic. Originally it was two volumes and over 1000 pages this edited volume and it was a challenging read. This new edition has kept Thompsons fantastic illustrations and removed some of the failings of the original text updating what is sure to become a classic of "systems biology"




A science classic. The meaning of form. Invention of chaos, 13 May 1999
A science masterpiece. Written during WWI, revised during WW2. An amazing amount of knowledge, viewed through the eyes of an incredibly perceptive scholar and scientist. Early 20th century writing style. Greek, Latin, French and German citations. From the prefatory note: "an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods which are the common places of physical science, which are by no means novel in their application to natural history, but which nevertheless naturalists are little accustomed to employ." Thompson's theory of transformations is covered in the last chapter.

A very indepth technical book on dog develpment ., 01 Dec 1998
This is a very in-depth and technical book on the early social development of dogs and the effects of socialization and training. It is a very good book for anyone who is serious about breeding dogs.

Good, but a few niggles., 06 Aug 2007
This book contains the essentials of scientific manuscript preparation. As many today obtain their first degree without ever having seen a primary publication, books like this one have become even more essential fare for any PhD student. Gustavii is right about many things. Most importantly, he is right to wonder why so many authors (and editors!) prefer summary data graphs over individual data graphs. He is right about grouped column charts. His discussion of line versus column graphs is also spot-on. It is surprising, then, that he seems to argue *against* box-and-whisker graphs; it becomes clear on the next page, however, that he is in favour of such graphs, but disapproves of the ridiculous width these boxes are given in standard software. I am afraid Gustavii's typical reader will come away from this advice thinking that such graphs are to be avoided. However, on the whole I wish more authors would heed what Gustavii has to say about graphs and tables.

The chapters on authorship, title, abstract and so on are standard fare. It is somewhat discouraging that these things need to be spelled out at all, but, alas, it is, and Gustavii does as good a job as any other number of books in this vein. New to me was his name for the nasty trick of denying earlier work importance or precedence by mentioning it fleetingly, once, deep in the Discussion section. Gustavii tells us that we should not do this, but I rather fear he is dispensing advice to tomorrow's charlatans. The discussion of slashes versus negative exponents is correct, but fails to explain why one is better than the other. Perhaps Gustavii felt that telling biomedical researchers that division is equivalent to subtraction in the exponent does little to enlighten them.

The discussion on common statistical errors is generally good. There is a section entitled "Using mean when median is meant" which misleadingly suggests that authors who make the mistake somehow intend to report the median but end up using the mean, when the problem is, of course, that they are simply not familiar with percentiles. The discussion of confidence intervals is also close but no cigar. Then again, the discussion of abuse of SEM is spot-on and there is a very good section on reporting the effects on risk. Gustavii mentions the public clamour which can result when the relative change in a risk is reported instead of the actual change of itself or, better yet, the Number Needed to Treat. In the vile scare-mongering tabloid environment of the UK, this advice will, sadly, continue to go unheeded.

The parts on manuscript preparation reflects current standard practice without a critical discussion of its grave flaws. I for one do not understand why manuscripts have to be double or triple spaced at the review stage (except that it perhaps discourages idiotic mark-up shenanigans at the other extreme). I also do not understand why people use Word instead of LaTeX, which does away with the need to control authors' typographic gormlessness through restrictive formatting rules. Gustavii tells us "The second most frequent fault in papers submitted is unnumbered pages." Why does this fault occur at all? Because we are hell-bent on remaining in the DTP Stone Age.

The chapter on the review process tries to strike a balance between training the next generation up to be good citizens and preparing them for harsh reality. Gustavii claims referees are honorable with few exceptions, but gives no hard data on how few that is, or what happens if you fall foul of one of these "extremely rare" evil-doers. Gustavii assures us that self-plagiarism will lead to a life sentence (presumably a publication ban). Well, no. I know an emiment mathematician who gets away with it again and again.

Some more niggles: New Scientist is not a prestigious magazine, but a popular publication, and different editorial rules apply (I disagree with the example, not the particular point G