So Simple a Beginning: How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World

A biophysicist reveals the hidden unity behind nature’s breathtaking complexityThe form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree.A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra.The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it.So Simple a Beginning shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering. Raghuveer Parthasarathy explains how four basic principles-self-assembly, regulatory circuits, predictable randomness, and scaling-shape the machinery of life on scales ranging from microscopic molecules to gigantic elephants.He describes how biophysics is helping to unlock the secrets of a host of natural phenomena, such as how your limbs know to form at the proper