富兰克林·M·哈罗德的《论生活》揭示了科学可以告诉我们的关于生活世界的东西。
从细菌、红杉到花园蜗牛和人类，所有生物都属于一个单一的生物化学家族。我们都遵循同样的原则，都是由一个或多个细胞组成的。我们炫耀的能力远远超过了无生命物质的能力，但我们却直面物质世界。那么，生活到底是什么？生物是如何运作的，它们是如何产生的？自古以来，诸如此类的问题一直困扰着哲学家和科学家，但在过去的半个世纪里，答案已经开始浮现。
富兰克林·M·哈罗德（Franklin M.Harold）提供了一个内在的视角，让对生物学大局感兴趣的读者能够了解生活。这本书追踪了生物是如何运作的，重点是生物学与物理和化学的相互作用。他断言生物学与物理科学不同，因为生命围绕着组织——也就是有目的的秩序——运转。
《生命论》旨在通过让读者了解生物景观，让生活变得易懂；它概述了生物学家目前理解的原理，并强调了尚未解决的主要问题。出现的是一个由两个顽固的谜团包围的生物学：心灵的本质和生命的起源。这幅生物学的画像是可以理解的，但不可避免地复杂，内在一致，并由大量事实知识支撑。
On Life: Cells, Genes, and the Evolution of Complexity (PDF)
Franklin M. Harold’s On Life reveals what science can tell us about the living world.
All creatures, from bacteria and redwoods to garden snails and humans, belong to a single biochemical family. We all operate by the same principles and are all made up of cells, either one or many. We flaunt capacities that far exceed those of inanimate matter, yet we stand squarely within the material world. So what is life, anyway? How do living things function, and how did they come into existence? Questions like these have baffled philosophers and scientists since antiquity, but over the past half-century answers have begun to emerge.
Offering an inside look, Franklin M. Harold makes life accessible to readers interested in the biological big picture. The book traces how living things operate, focusing on the interplay of biology with physics and chemistry. He asserts that biology stands apart from the physical sciences because life revolves around organization– that is, purposeful order.
On Life aims to make life intelligible by giving readers an understanding of the biological landscape; it sketches the principles as biologists presently understand them and highlights major unresolved issues. What emerges is a biology bracketed by two stubborn mysteries: the nature of the mind and the origin of life. This portrait of biology is comprehensible but inescapably complex, internally consistent, and buttressed by a wealth of factual knowledge.
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