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with wit and arresting thought experiments—Dennett shows how culture enables reflection by installing a bounty of thinking tools, or memes, in our brains. Language, itself composed of memes, turbocharged this interplay. The result, a mind that can comprehend the questions it poses, emerges from a process of cultural evolution.

An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and other researchers, From Bacteria to Bach and Back will delight and entertain anyone who hopes to understand human creativity in all its wondrous applications.

DANIEL C. DENNETT is the author of Intuition Pumps, Breaking the Spell, Freedom Evolves, and Consciousness Explained. He is the University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

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A CRACK IN CREATION
Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution
By Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
[US — Houghton Mifflin, UK — Bodley Head, China — Hunan Science, Audio — Audible; Manuscript; Pub Date: June 2017; 320 pages]

In the tradition of The Double Helix, A Crack in Creation is an insider’s account of the biggest scientific discovery of our era: a cheap, easy way of rewriting genetic code, with nearly limitless promise and peril.

Not since the atomic bomb has a technology so alarmed its inventors that they warned the world against its use. Not, that is, until the spring of 2015, when biologist Jennifer Doudna called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the new gene-editing tool CRISPR to make heritable changes in human embryos. The cheapest, simplest, most effective way of manipulating DNA ever known, CRISPR may well give us the cure to HIV, genetic diseases, and some cancers, and will help address the world’s hunger crisis. Yet even the tiniest changes to DNA could have myriad, unforeseeable consequences—to say nothing of the ethical and societal repercussions of intentionally mutating embryos to create "better" humans.

Writing with fellow researcher Samuel Sternberg, Doudna shares the thrilling story of her discovery, and passionately argues that enormous responsibility comes with the ability to rewrite the code of life. With CRISPR, she shows, we have effectively taken control of evolution. What will we do with this unfathomable power?

JENNIFER A. DOUDNA is a professor in the Chemistry and the Molecular and Cell Biology Departments at the University of California, Berkeley, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and researcher in the Physical Biosciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is internationally recognized as a leading expert on RNA-protein structure and function, CRISPR biology, and genome engineering.

SAMUEL H. STERNBERG received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2014, and has been a member of Jennifer Doudna’s laboratory since 2010. He was a lead researcher and author of numerous high-profile publications on the CRISPR technology. He has been awarded the RNA Society’s Scaringe Award and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, among other honors.

Brockman, Inc. Frankfurt 2016 Hotlist
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