"Simplexity, as I understand it, is the range of solutions living organisms have found, despite the complexity of natural processes, to enable the brain to prepare an action and plan for the consequences of it. These solutions are simplifying principles that enable the processing of information or situations, by taking into account past experience and anticipating the future. They are neither caricatures, shortcuts, or summaries. They are new ways of asking questions, sometimes at the cost of occasional detours, in order to achieve faster, more elegant, more effective actions." A. B. As Alain Berthoz demonstrates in this profoundly original book, simplicity is never easy; it requires suppressing, selecting, connecting, thinking, in order to then act in the best way possible. And what if we, in turn, are inspired by the living world to process the complexity that surrounds us? Alain Berthoz is professor at the Collège de France where he is co-director of the Laboratoire de physiologie de la perception et de l'action. [Laboratory for the physiology of perception and action]. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and is the author of Le Sens du mouvement [The Brain's Sense of Movement] and La Décision [Emotion and Reason].
"In this book I examine the extraordinary saga of life on Earth in the light of the most recent scientific discoveries. This saga has resulted in the extraordinary success of our species, and in the mortal threats that it has posed for the future. By favoring immediate benefits, to the detriment, sometimes, of long-term advantages, natural selection, in my opinion, is the source of this remarkable success, but also of the perils that come out of it. Modern science has established the implausibility of the Biblical tale for the origins of human beings; it has not, however, invalidated the intuition that inspired it. Humanity is, infact, tainted by an intrinsic defect, by a genetic "original sin," that threatens to lead to its demise. We do indeed need redemption to save us, but it can only come from humanity itself. We must find in the resources of our minds a wisdom that is not inscribed in our genes." C. de D. The book of a great biologist, but also of a moralist. Christian de Duve, Nobel Laureate in Medicine, is professor emeritus at the Université catholique de Louvain and at Rockefeller University in New York. He is the author of À l'écoute du vivant (2002) and of Singularités (2005) [Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life], both best-sellers.
"I wrote this book out of my experiences during thirty years of teaching at the Collège de France. In it I look both at culture and art - music and painting - as well as life in society, ethics, and the meaning of death; languages and writing, as well as the neural and molecular bases of memory and learning. This book is a fresco that brings together a great amount of varied data, discussions, and hypotheses. It anchors the substance of contemporary science in the history of a range of disciplines: neurology, ethology, the biology of evolution, the biology of development, the study of consciousness, as well as experimental psychology and genomics. Finally, this book attempts to show that it is up to us to relentlessly inspire the minds of humans to invent a future that will enable humanity to attain a life of more solidarity, a happier life for and with each one of us." J.-P. C. Jean-Pierre Changeux is honorary professor at the Collège de France and at the Institut Pasteur, a member of the French Academy of Sciences. In addition to L'Homme neuronal [Neuronal Man] he is the author of Raison et Plaisir and L'Homme de vérité. He is also co-author, with Alain Connes, of Matière à penser [Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics] and, with Paul Ricoeur, of La Nature et la Règle [What Makes Us Think?]. All thought-provoking works.
"Fifty years ago, Francis Crick and James D. Watson discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, the carrier of genetic information, the basis for heredity. They believed they had, according to Francis Crick's own expression, found "the secret of life." The main aim of this book is to continue the story beyond the double helix and interpret recent developments through transformations that have occurred in biology in the last fifty years. These transformations are often unknown by the general public, as if molecular biology had remained stalled around the double helix. But the return of the question "What is life?" is also the result of events that have occurred outside biology, of a general evolution of ideas that we will undertake to investigate." M. M. Michel Morange is a biologist, and professor at the University of Paris-VI, and at the École normale supérieur. He is director of the Centre Cavaillès d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences. He is the author of La Part des gènes [The Misunderstood Gene].
