Denis Noble: "Neo-Darwinism Is Dead" | We Need A Biology Beyond Genes

Professor of Biology Denis Noble, best known for creating the first mathematical model of a beating cardiac cell, proposes a profound shift in how we understand life. In this conversation with Hans Busstra, he challenges the long-standing central dogma of Neo-Darwinism: the notion of one-way causation from DNA to cell to organism, with genes positioned as the ultimate governors of biology. Instead, Noble proposes a theory of 'biological relativity': no single level—genes, cells, organs, or the whole organism—has privileged causal authority. Causation flows both upward and downward. Physiological states influence cellular processes, which in turn can reshape the genome. Agency is distributed across levels of biological organisation, and the genome is not a dictatorial blueprint but an interactive participant. Far from rejecting Darwin, Noble sees this as returning to Darwin’s own intuition that evolution requires mechanisms far richer than blind chance. Understanding those mechanisms, he argues, is the next Einsteinian step in biology. Books by Denis Noble: The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes - https://shorturl.at/fTX4y Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity - https://shorturl.at/kfULX The Logic of Life: The Challenge of Integrative Physiology - https://shorturl.at/ZcReV The Initiation of the Heartbeat -https://shorturl.at/csWvr The Language of Symmetry - https://www.routledge.com/The-Language-of-Symmetry/Rattigan-Noble-Hatta/p/book/9781032303949 Topics discussed in the interview: 0:00 Intro 4:43 What causes our very first heartbeat? 6:36 Noble’s 1958 research on the first heart model 8:40 On self-excitation in cells (and what “self” means) 9:24 The central dogma in biology 11:17 Schrödinger’s view of life as a crystal 13:43 To what degree DNA replicates like a crystal 15:16 The amazing error correction in our genome 16:59 How enzymes know when they encounter an error 19:19 “Genes look like a code of life…” 22:05 The merits and limitations of the Human Genome Project 23:39 Can we really say “the cell wants” something? 24:51 Understanding the scales and extraordinary mechanisms in a cell 27:18 What we do and don't understand 29:16 On Michael Levin’s work 31:23 On cancer 35:41 Neo-Darwinism vs true Darwinism 38:19 Something must have sped evolution up 41:22 The cell controls the genome 44:19 On the metaphysics of chemistry leading to life 46:42 Biological relativity 51:08 The universe as a self-excited circuit 52:18 On Richard Dawkins 54:27 On the difference between causation and association 56:48 The limitations on the predictive power of genomics 58:46 The false hopes around the Human Genome Project 1:00:20 The central dogma in biology has the wrong metaphysics 1:07:03 Noble on Spinoza 1:11:08 How dualistic thinking still limits us 1:13:40 On the nature of the self 1:17:06 How life lives on the boundary between order and chaos 1:18:32 How errors become solutions 1:19:51 A love story between a human and an AI 1:23:58 On quantum biology 1:26:27 On the importance of humility in science 1:28:16 How we crave meaning (and reductionist science has deprived us of it) 1:29:07 Denis Noble singing troubadour poetry 1:30:27 Science must lay down its weapons 1:32:18 What dancing to the tune of life means on a personal level Archival footage under fair use policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slRyGLmt3qc&t=28s The Essentia Foundation thanks the Lorentz Centre in Leiden for their accommodation of this interview: https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/ Copyright © 2025 Essentia Foundation. All rights on interview content reserved.