The biological and philosophical implications of the emergence of new collective individuals from associations of living beings.Our intuitive assumption that only organisms are the real individuals in the natural world is at odds with developments in cell biology, ecology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and other fields. Although organisms have served for centuries as nature's paradigmatic ind…
"Presents a synthesis of specific properties of living organisms as they can be described by modern research in order to generate a coherent theory of life"--OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.