On Beyond Living – Rhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences Doyle

On Beyond LivingRhetorical Transformations of the Life Sciences\nAuthor(s): Richard Doyle\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780804727655, 978-0804727655\nSynopsis\nWhat do biologists study when they study \""life\"" today? Drawing on tools from rhetoric and poststructuralist theory, the author argues that the ascent of molecular biology, with its emphasis on molecules such as DNA rather than organisms, was enabled by crucial rhetorical \""softwares.\"" Metaphors such as the genetic \""code\"" made possible a transformation of the very concept of life, a transformation that often casts organisms as information systems.\n\n With careful readings of key texts from the history of molecular biologysuch as those of Erwin Schrdinger, George Gamow, Jacques Monod, and Franois Jacobthe author maps out the complex relations between the practices of rhetoric and the technoscientific triumphs they accompanied, triumphs.