Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 19
 A treasure August 7, 2009
Ido Golding (Urbana, IL)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a real treasure. I always recommend it to new students arriving at my lab. Not only does it give them a clear and elegant introduction to the field of "systems biology"; it actually inspires them to think in simple, yet quantitative, terms about living systems.
Elegant and thorough introduction to systems biology August 5, 2009
O. Shoval (Boston)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a great book! It manages to convey the new ideas of systems biology with clarity and without sacrificing scientific rigor.
Whether you're a biologist, physicist or engineer this book will be perfect for you as it encompasses the many disciplines that make up systems biology.
Many universities (including Harvard) are using this book as their textbook for introductory courses to systems biology. This is a testament to its clearness and thoroughness. There are also excellent homework type problems at the end of each chapter, and a solution manual is available from the author for class instructors.
As a graduate student of systems biology I found this book very useful and I highly recommend it!
Important:
Disregard the 4 reviews that give this book a low rating! I wonder if they are related, as they all are from July 09, and argue the exact same thing: that the modeling of biology described in the book is not representative of biology. This is a philosophical argument that by no means reduces the importance, relevance and scientific depth of this book. Discussions as to what is systems biology should not be conducted using Amazon book reviews.
 Background in mathematics and statistical physics required to read this book July 25, 2009
Margaret J
0 out of 12 found this review helpful
Systems biology aspires to give a quantitative description of the phenomenon of life without dealing with ensembles of interacting "parts". The idea of complete macroscopic treatment of life process (or processes) has been explained and elucidated by the greatest thinkers of humankind for the last two thousands years. However only in 20th century science could employ quantitative methods to deal with systems whose "parts" cannot be either enumerated or even defined in a relevant manner. As much as it is true that networks reconstruction is one of the known ways to model (enforce) approximate behavior of veritable non-decomposable systems, Alon's book does not give the reader a clue about principles of such methodology. Nor does it give a clue about any kind of basic principles of any scientific method. Not even statistical physics that appears to be the true field to which this book could be relevant. Judging from the author's introduction and "politically correct" official reviews by physicists, the purpose of this book is to simplify biology. This exposes the author and the readers to the situation in which over-simplification leads to models that no longer pertain to modeled phenomena. Paraphrasing Einstein one could say, it is good to make things as simple as possible but not simpler than that! Well, in this case what remains from biology is indeed too simple to be useful in understanding biologically relevant phenomena.
From this point of view it is a very poorly written book that has a potential to mislead readers about the nature of biological complexity in particular and biology in general. I am not sure if this book represents a good physics (perhaps yes) but the word "physics" is not in the title while "biology" and "biological" are.
Difficult to read book with wrong title (no biology) July 10, 2009
Christopher N
3 out of 14 found this review helpful
The book is not really about either systems biology or about general biology. Rather than that it appears to be an exercise in application of some branches of physics to a biased vision on what should be a description of biological processes. It has long been postulated that biology is not physics, see for instance prominent work of Erns Mayr This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World, and that physicists tend to ask questions irrelevant to the possible explanations of the phenomenon of life. This book is a typical example of this long recognized methodological confusion. The author attempts to write a book about biology but all life science he imagines is a part of physics. This is probably a reason why models of phenomena are treated like they were the phenomena themselves; something that is absolutely unacceptable in biology (see Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life (Complexity in Ecological Systems).) The author and some physicists - reviewers claim that "life looks simple" after reading this publication. I don't think the assertion is correct. What looks simple are models of the previous models that actually do not pertain much to the adequate properties of biological processes. I understand that the book may appeal to physics graduates desperate for finding jobs in biology (there is no demand for physicists these days comparing to a decade ago.) However, I don't think even physicists will be exposed (by this book) to any form of viable scientific thinking in life sciences. I feel that one star is an appropriate rating for (perhaps not really intentional) dishonesty of the title and premise of this statistical physics compilation of past work of the author.
Optimistic but misleading story about physics in biology July 5, 2009
Hubert from Baltimore
6 out of 17 found this review helpful
I DO NOT RECOMMEND either this book or a simplistic way of thinking it advocates as tools for understanding the phenomenon of life. For one thing no sensible biologist would agree with the idea of an "inherent design" being a property of biological phenomena. The "design" is ours because we need to filter what we see into a framework of what we are capable of modeling. The book is not really attempting to approach the issue of modelability (our ability to adequately model) but treats physical or cybernetic models of other models (known from biology proper and even more so from biochemical kinetics) like they were naturally occurring subjects of biological research. As much as it appears to be a well known mistake of "doing physics" under the name of biology, I don't see any reason why anyone interested in systems biology should read this book. Judging from the raving reviews by physicists exposed on the Amazon.com site, I assume that physics in the book is OK but I don't think "systems biology" in the title does the mislead buyers and readers any good. As far as treatment of networks is concerned, the book does not focus on the principles at all. Therefore it is not particularly useful as a tutorial for the readers who would want to learn about network-based methods in today's bioengineering, ecology, immunology, and biochemistry. For at least these reasons I consider this book an insignificant and unsuccessful exercise in self-perpetuation of physics beyond its own limits. I'm really sorry but NO, THANK YOU! I am unsure if the fair rating should be one or two stars but because of the quite infuriating blend of naivete and arrogance of the text (not an unusual combination at all) I tend to favor one star.
Showing reviews 6-10 of 19
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