J. Arvid Ågren, PhD, assistant professor at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, and Manus M. Patten, teaching professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Biology, recently co-edited The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict, published by Harvard University Press.
Co-editors J. Arvid Ågren and Manus M. Patten pose with their book, The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict.
In this book, Ågren and other leading evolutionary theorists and philosophers come together to understand how organisms persist, even when riddled with internal conflict—from cancer cells to selfish genes.
Challenging fundamental precepts of evolutionary theory, The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict also examines various questions, such as:
- How does a vast menagerie of organs, tissues, cells and genes coalesce to form a unified organism;
- Is an organism really a cohesive agent that adapts to the ecosystem it inhabits; and
- Is an organism itself an ecosystem, within which individual components are engaged in a continuous arms race?
