This book held promise of an exploration of "language" in communication among bacteria and organisms, and among cells in an organism. Here and there in the book there are glimpses of this. However, all in all the entire book is just a use of the metaphor of language to explain or describe in a quite engaging way how living things work. The author uses this metaphor and her considerable rhetorical skills to keep our interest through the maze of complexity.
This book caused me to hope for a far better, much more difficult feat: to tease out what is really communication and to explore lexicon, syntax, and meaning. Do bacteria "speak" to each other? Are there messages that are more than a key in a lock or a concentration gradient?
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