Is Life Purposeful? A Paradigm Shift in Understanding Living Systems

Denis Noble is Emeritus Professor and co-Director of Computational Physiology who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at the University of Oxford. He is one of the pioneers of systems biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart. He is also a philosopher of biology, and his books The Music of Life and Dance to the Tune of Life challenge the foundations of current biological sciences, question the central dogma, its unidirectional view of information flow, and its imposition of a bottom-up methodology for research in the life sciences.

Raymond Noble is Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute for Women’s Health, University College London. He held a Rockefeller Senior Research Fellowship with a joint appointment in Physiology and Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College London, where he became Deputy Dean of Life Sciences and Graduate Tutor in Women’s Health and where he also taught medical ethics in reproductive health. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and a chartered biologist, writing extensively on biological theory and philosophy, working extensively on how organisms sense their environment and make choices.