
So Simple a Beginning
How Four Physical Principles Shape Our Living World
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $17.90
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Anand Jagatia
About this listen
This audiobook narrated by Anand Jagatia reveals the hidden unity behind nature's breathtaking complexity
The form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of physical principles shapes the forms and behaviors of every creature in it.
So Simple a Beginning shows how the emerging new science of biophysics is transforming our understanding of life on Earth and enabling potentially lifesaving but controversial technologies such as gene editing, artificial organ growth, and ecosystem engineering.
Raghuveer Parthasarathy explains how four basic principles—self-assembly, regulatory circuits, predictable randomness, and scaling—shape the machinery of life on scales ranging from microscopic molecules to gigantic elephants. He describes how biophysics is helping to unlock the secrets of a host of natural phenomena, such as how your limbs know to form at the proper places, and why humans need lungs but ants do not. Parthasarathy explores how the cutting-edge biotechnologies of tomorrow could enable us to alter living things in ways both subtle and profound.
This sweeping tour of biophysics offers astonishing new perspectives on how the wonders of life can arise from so simple a beginning.
©2022 Raghuveer Parthasarathy (P)2022 Princeton University PressListeners also enjoyed...
-
Transformer
- The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
- By: Nick Lane
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, biology has been dominated by the study of genetic information. Information is important, but it is only part of what makes us alive. Our inheritance also includes our living metabolic network, a flame passed from generation to generation, right back to the origin of life. In Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane reveals a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight-how the same simple chemistry gives rise to life and causes our demise.
-
-
You need lot of chemistry to get it
- By 11104 on 09-05-22
By: Nick Lane
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
Life’s Ratchet
- How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos
- By: Peter M. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
-
-
For biologists to learn single molecule biophysics
- By A Synthetic Biologist on 09-04-14
By: Peter M. Hoffman
-
Sentience
- The Invention of Consciousness
- By: Nicholas Humphrey
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind.
-
-
Audible, please re-record this!
- By H on 03-13-24
-
What Is Life?
- Five Great Ideas in Biology
- By: Paul Nurse
- Narrated by: Paul Nurse
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The renowned biologist Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In What Is Life?, he takes up the challenge of describing what it means to be alive in a way that every listener can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step-by-step Nurse illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology - the Cell, the Gene, Evolution by Natural Selection, Life as Chemistry, and Life as Information.
-
-
Will listen to this again!
- By angela on 10-06-21
By: Paul Nurse
-
The Experience Machine
- How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
- By: Andy Clark
- Narrated by: Andy Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?
-
-
About halfway through, it became propaganda
- By Jesse Helton on 08-13-23
By: Andy Clark
-
Transformer
- The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death
- By: Nick Lane
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, biology has been dominated by the study of genetic information. Information is important, but it is only part of what makes us alive. Our inheritance also includes our living metabolic network, a flame passed from generation to generation, right back to the origin of life. In Transformer, biochemist Nick Lane reveals a scientific renaissance that is hiding in plain sight-how the same simple chemistry gives rise to life and causes our demise.
-
-
You need lot of chemistry to get it
- By 11104 on 09-05-22
By: Nick Lane
-
Determined
- A Science of Life Without Free Will
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.
-
-
Abridged - no Appendix!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-02-23
-
Life’s Ratchet
- How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos
- By: Peter M. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The cells in our bodies consist of molecules, made up of the same carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms found in air and rocks. But molecules, such as water and sugar, are not alive. So how do our cells - assemblies of otherwise "dead" molecules - come to life, and together constitute a living being? In Life’s Ratchet, physicist Peter M. Hoffmann locates the answer to this age-old question at the nanoscale.
-
-
For biologists to learn single molecule biophysics
- By A Synthetic Biologist on 09-04-14
By: Peter M. Hoffman
-
Sentience
- The Invention of Consciousness
- By: Nicholas Humphrey
- Narrated by: Michael Langan
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We feel, therefore we are. Conscious sensations ground our sense of self. They are crucial to our idea of ourselves as psychic beings: present, existent, and mattering. But is it only humans who feel this way? Do other animals? Will future machines? Weaving together intellectual adventure and cutting-edge science, Nicholas Humphrey describes in Sentience his quest for answers: from his discovery of blindsight in monkeys and his pioneering work on social intelligence to breakthroughs in the philosophy of mind.
-
-
Audible, please re-record this!
- By H on 03-13-24
-
What Is Life?
- Five Great Ideas in Biology
- By: Paul Nurse
- Narrated by: Paul Nurse
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The renowned biologist Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In What Is Life?, he takes up the challenge of describing what it means to be alive in a way that every listener can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step-by-step Nurse illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology - the Cell, the Gene, Evolution by Natural Selection, Life as Chemistry, and Life as Information.
-
-
Will listen to this again!
- By angela on 10-06-21
By: Paul Nurse
-
The Experience Machine
- How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
- By: Andy Clark
- Narrated by: Andy Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For as long as we’ve studied human cognition, we’ve believed that our senses give us direct access to the world. What we see is what’s really there—or so the thinking goes. But new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology have turned this assumption on its head. What if rather than perceiving reality passively, your mind actively predicts it?
-
-
About halfway through, it became propaganda
- By Jesse Helton on 08-13-23
By: Andy Clark
-
What Is Life?
- How Chemistry Becomes Biology
- By: Addy Pross
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrdinger posed a simple, yet profound, question: What is life?. How could the very existence of such extraordinary chemical systems be understood? This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists both before, and ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful behaviour which we do not see in inert matter. So how does chemistry give rise to biology?
-
-
Profound & Life Changing...
- By Daegan Smith on 04-06-15
By: Addy Pross
-
Free Agents
- How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
- By: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Kevin J. Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency—or free will—is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose.
-
-
Adding Clarity to Agency
- By Brad Caldwell on 10-10-23
-
How the Mind Works
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 26 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this delightful, acclaimed bestseller, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness?
-
-
Excellent, but a difficult listen.
- By David Roseberry on 12-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
-
What's Gotten into You
- The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner
- By: Dan Levitt
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every one of us contains a billion times more atoms than all the grains of sand in the earth’s deserts. If you weigh 150 pounds, you’ve got enough carbon to make 25 pounds of charcoal, enough salt to fill a saltshaker, enough chlorine to disinfect several backyard swimming pools, and enough iron to forge a 3-inch nail. But how did these elements combine to make us human?
-
-
One of the Very Best Science Books I have Read
- By TStair on 03-20-23
By: Dan Levitt
-
The Tangled Tree
- A Radical New History of Life
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.
-
-
Very Enjoyable and Readable
- By Dennis on 08-18-18
By: David Quammen
-
Symphony in C
- Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything
- By: Robert M. Hazen
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An enchanting biography of the most resonant - and most necessary - chemical element on Earth. Carbon. It's in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It's worth billions as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries yet to be solved about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it?
-
-
There is a Caveat
- By Joseph L Contreras on 06-26-19
By: Robert M. Hazen
-
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
- Space, Time, and Motion
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The most trusted explainer of the most mind-boggling concepts pulls back the veil of mystery that has too long cloaked the most valuable building blocks of modern science. Sean Carroll, with his genius for making complex notions entertaining, presents in his uniquely lucid voice the fundamental ideas informing the modern physics of reality. In the tradition of the legendary Richard Feynman lectures presented sixty years ago, this book is an inspiring, dazzling introduction to a way of seeing that will resonate across cultural and generational boundaries for many years to come.
-
-
Accompanying PDF is Included
- By Barton on 11-21-22
By: Sean Carroll
-
The Song of the Cell
- An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of The Emperor of All Maladies, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and The Gene, a #1 New York Times bestseller, comes his most spectacular book yet, an exploration of medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells. Rich with Mukherjee’s revelatory and exhilarating stories of scientists, doctors, and the patients whose lives may be saved by their work, The Song of the Cell is the third book in this extraordinary writer’s exploration of what it means to be human.
-
-
Beyond Words Wonderful
- By Lynn on 11-27-22
-
Shape
- The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else
- By: Jordan Ellenberg
- Narrated by: Jordan Ellenberg
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you're like most people, geometry is a dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade. It's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face.
-
-
Excellent, but not suited for an audiobook
- By Nemo71 on 06-21-21
By: Jordan Ellenberg
-
The Vital Question
- Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
- By: Nick Lane
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies, and cities. Yet there's a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
-
-
Ouch!
- By Mark on 06-24-16
By: Nick Lane
-
The Gene
- An Intimate History
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
-
-
It's a Wonderful Book
- By JKC on 06-02-16
-
The Demon in the Machine
- How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
- By: Paul Davies
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is life? In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect.
-
-
Thought Provoking
- By Amazon Customer on 08-26-24
By: Paul Davies
Critic reviews
"Hands down the most beautiful book I've ever read. . . . The intersection of biology and physics might be the most underappreciated cross-over in the sciences."—Nicole Barbaro, Bookmarked (Nicole Barbaro)
What listeners say about So Simple a Beginning
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 03-31-25
Excellent
This is an excellent drive through physical principles governing biology. The overarching framework was not too constraining, and it was mostly "here are some really interesting aspects of the topic." I enjoyed it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 04-11-22
Nano details, single DNA egg strand extraction
Beads on a String, The Who sings, to get us together like "Beads on a String" or DNA wrapped histones, described, by this writer as beads on a string.
Need to read again is ultimate praise. Easy to mistake new science as tough reading or writing. Taking a DNA strand, fixing cystic fibrosis, re-itntroducing it to follow an egg to a complex human.
Hear about nodules, becoming arms and legs.
A 30 second rewind is audio science delight! If you're a science lover this is new author also.
Biophysics and mechanobiology will have great new books coming. Life's Rachet, I think author Pullman?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 04-03-22
If you enjoy genetics, physics, and math ...
I personally particularly enjoy books that make broad connections across math and science, like Geoffrey West's "Scale," Bill Bryson's "A Short History ...", and Strogratz's "Sync:..." If you have similar interests and a particular interest in genetics, "So Simple a Beginning" should be a great fit.
It's essentially two parts. The first half covers a few common themes that unify and permeate biology: self-assembly, predictable randomness, regulatory networks, and scale, I found discussions about how mathematical principles like Random Walks combined with physical properties like Reynolds Numbers and viscosity influence biological concerns like appendages for motion.
The second half focuses more squarely on genetics and genetics engineering with fairly lucid explanations of PCR (polymerase chain reaction), gene sequencing, CRISPR-based gene editing. and several other biotech buzzwords.
One particular note I found refreshing is that although, like many books on genetics, the author includes a fair bit of ethical discussion, he does so without overly pushing a particular moral or ethical worldview and instead seems to respect differing viewpoints.
I wish the first part of the book could have been a little longer, perhaps diving more into emergent phenomena, which he approaches with a couple of the four principles, but without ever outright using the term. It almost seems like memory mechanisms, as in immunity and DNA itself, are a fifth principle that allows continual accumulation of advances and increasingly complex emergent phenomena. But I suppose no such book is ever complete.
On the whole, a great job in a broad and interesting topic.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!