Genome is a "book of life" like a manual? Are genes "selfish"? What is the meaning of life? Decades of biological research have already overturned many "traditional beliefs." Recently, Cen Shaoyu, an author of the Observer Network's science column, had a video dialogue with Philip Ball, the author of "How Life Works" and former editor at Nature for 20 years, discussing these issues.
Philip Ball in a video dialogue with the Observer Network. Observer Network
Observer Network: "How Life Works" is very enlightening to read, reflecting your academic background of interdisciplinary studies. This seems to have been a long-term trend in your academic career and popular science works. Initially studied chemistry at Oxford, then quickly shifted to physics, and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Bristol. Why did you make such a shift?
Philip Ball: It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it short. Between Oxford and Bristol, I was a member of a rock band for two years. After two years, I felt that if I didn't return to academia, I might never come back.
So I contacted my Oxford supervisor and asked if he had any suggestions for applications. He recommended Bob Evers at Bristol because their research areas were similar. I was doing research on surface phase transitions in chemistry at Oxford, which could be done both in the chemistry department and the physics department. My supervisor at Bristol was also doing similar research, observing the behavior of surfaces, but he happened to be in the physics department.
Therefore, I had already entered the field of physical chemistry while at Oxford, and the content of my research was in the crossroads.
Observer Network: The English version of "How Life Works" was published in 2023, and it easily makes one think of Schrödinger's 1944 book "What Is Life?" (WHAT IS LIFE?—The Physical Aspect Of The Living). You also mention him in the book, but say that reading "What Is Life?" is a poignant experience now. Both are scholars with a physics background thinking about biology. What do you think are the biggest differences between you and Schrödinger after nearly 80 years?
Philip Ball: Schrödinger's book is very interesting and still worth reading. It is short, easy to read, and highly inspiring. But looking at it today, it also seems a bit strange.
As a physicist of that era, especially working in quantum mechanics, Schrödinger believed that everything at the molecular level seemed to have a certain randomness. So he asked the question: If the molecular level is random, why can we get something predictable and stable at the level of the entire organism?
His answer was that there must be something he called a "code script" that guides everything. He didn't know what this would consist of, but he imagined chromosomes achieved encoding in some way. People now think this was a vision, foreseeing something like DNA.
"What Is Life?" based on Schrödinger's 1943 lecture
DNA does indeed encode information along the long chain of large molecules, and such things are necessary. But I think, from today's perspective, Schrödinger's problem is that he gives the impression that this "code" directs everything in the organism, including how it is built and operates, as if it were a set of instructions.
This has indeed become the paradigm of molecular biology. From then on, we have viewed the genome and all DNA in this way. But I think that in the past few decades, as our understanding of how genes actually work in cells has deepened, it has become harder to continue holding this view, seeing it as a script or a manual that controls everything.
The way I discuss this issue in "How Life Works" is that it's best to see genes and DNA as "molecular resources," and our cells decide how to use these resources based on their environment, such as what kind of tissue they belong to, or what is happening in their surroundings. So I want to refocus attention on the cell, not the genome or DNA, because in the end, the cell is the smallest unit that is "alive."
Observer Network: You try to tell readers that many old terms in biology may no longer be relevant. For example, life should not be seen as a machine. In the book, there is a very interesting analogy, which I also recommend everyone to watch, roughly meaning that "dissecting" a well-functioning radio and comparing it with a damaged one may lead to absurd research processes; accumulated information may not help fix the radio.
But many current treatment methods are still somewhat like fixing a radio. And you have a whole chapter in the book discussing "Troubleshooting: Re-thinking Medicine." Do you think our current understanding of life is sufficient to support another form of treatment, such as one based on "holism"?
Philip Ball: I don't know if I should call my suggested method "holism." If we want to intervene in any system, such as fixing our car or furnace, we must find out where the problem is. Medicine is no different.
If the health problems we face are really due to the gene level, and a specific gene is not functioning properly, then it makes complete sense to go into the gene level to fix it. Cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease are indeed caused by specific gene mutations, but not all diseases have a genetic basis.
You can find an association between each disease and the gene level, but it doesn't mean they are mainly caused by that level. For example, let's think about the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem was the immune system's response to the viral infection, and intervening at the gene level was not the right approach.
The majority of common diseases we face today, from heart disease to diabetes to neurodegenerative diseases, most occur at higher levels, and genes may be involved in some way, but whether we can cure the disease by repairing a single gene is completely unclear, as too many genes are involved.
We must consider at which level intervention in medicine is most effective. For some diseases, like cancer, efforts to find gene therapies have not proven to be very useful. I think in this case, it may be time to rethink how we develop treatments.
Observer Network: Some people try to find inspiration for "holism" from traditional medicine. How do you view this?
Philip Ball: I think in those older times, when there was no modern understanding of biology, there was not much difference in some ways from the way some drugs are developed today. That is also why some therapies from ancient times have been incorporated into modern medicine.
It was an empirical method. People just saw what worked, perhaps in ancient times, a certain herb worked because it contained a certain molecular component that produced some effects in the body.
Today, many drug developments are still done through trial and error, rather than based on a deep, rational understanding of the disease at the molecular level, and then designing the drug. Using that rational approach to develop drugs is still very difficult, but we are becoming increasingly skilled at it. The more we understand the human body, the better we do.
But often it is impossible, as it is too complex, and we often still have to try using different drugs that we think may be effective.
This also happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when various drugs were tested, even though they were originally for different diseases, just to see if they might be effective, and some of them actually were.
Observer Network: The organism is indeed complex. Let's start exploring from the gene level. You point out some inaccurate perceptions in the book, such as the genome is not the "book of life," and the "selfish gene" leads to many misunderstandings.
You also quote biologist James Griesemer: "Genes are not the master molecules, but prisoners of development, imprisoned in the deepest prison." When I read this, I couldn't help but think of a Shakespearean line: "I am a king within a nut shell, and I hold the universe in my hand."
Can you talk specifically about your understanding of genes? Although you have been reminding readers of the shortcomings of metaphors in the book, I still want to ask, from king to prisoner, where would you place genes?
Philip Ball: Finding a good metaphor for the role of genes is very difficult. When we see it as the instructions for building and running the body, this is an easy story to tell, and it was the story told when the Human Genome Project started in the 1990s. But since then, it has become clear that this statement is overly simplified, but it is hard to find another story to replace it.
The old view of genes is that each gene is a piece of DNA that encodes the structure of a protein it can make. For some genes, this is correct. But we now know that a gene may produce slightly different proteins in different tissues. So, some information comes from a higher level of organization, deciding which molecules the gene produces.
Other genes do not encode proteins. They are sometimes called non-coding genes, which is misleading, as they simply do not encode proteins, but they do encode RNA. We used to think it was just a messenger, passing information from DNA to protein.
But we now know that there are many RNA molecules that function independently in the cell, and they are as important as proteins in some ways. So we have to rethink what genes do. And the more we look, the more complex it becomes.
Many of these functional RNA molecules are actually very small, almost unable to encode much information. In fact, there are also many proteins, or protein-like molecules, that are extremely small, called microproteins, and the human body uses them.
Microproteins and small proteins, Salk Institute
So I feel that DNA, genes, and the genome are almost like a warehouse storing all these different molecular resources, and the cell finds a way to use them in some way, working together.
And a lot happens in the genome, outside the genes themselves, with many segments controlling when and how genes are turned on and off, and how they are used. So I believe we should not consider individual genes in the genome, but rather see the genome as an entity.
Nobel laureate and biologist Barbara McClintock called it "the sensitive organ of the cell." I think this is a great way to think about what DNA is. Its mode of operation is more like an organ, rather than a string of information, and it responds to what is happening around it.
Observer Network: The most direct challenge to the idea of genes ruling everything, in my view, is the complex regulatory mechanisms, including epigenetics, which many people have heard of the term "methylation."
But you also remind in "How Life Works" that: "Since our starting point is to correct the outdated myths about genes (which is understandable), we should not go to the other extreme, that is, completely deny the importance of genes, and instead take epigenetics as the new 'mystery of life.'" What tendencies in academic or popular science fields have you observed that prompted this reminder?
Philip Ball: There has been explosive interest in the concept of epigenetics. The word was actually coined in the 1940s, referring to things that happen in the body that are not guided by genes, in a way that is "outside of genes."
Now, it means something else. Although every cell in our body has the same genome, obviously these cells behave differently. We have skin cells, muscle cells, and neurons in the brain, and epigenetics is one aspect of causing these differences.
It is actually a process that turns some genes on and others off. The methylation you mentioned is one way to achieve this, that is, a very small chemical group attached to DNA and changes its activity. This does not necessarily mean it is necessarily turned on or off, how this code works is quite complicated.
I feel that many people are uncomfortable with the idea that genes determine everything, as if we are just robots at the mercy of our genes. So when we have a better understanding of these epigenetic processes, there is a tendency to think, "Oh, this can free us from the fate determined by genes," so epigenetics has become a new hot topic.
Some studies claim that any information written into DNA through epigenetic means will not be passed to the germ cells, and all this information will be cleared away. But there are also some studies suggesting that maybe it can be passed on. This seems to be a revolutionary discovery, because we have always learned that we inherit only genes, not other information.
Now it seems that the evidence for those reports about human epigenetics is actually very weak, and it is completely unclear whether it has real significance in humans. In plants, epigenetics is recognized and actually widespread. But in higher animals like us, how significant it is is not fully clear.
I think that as people become very excited about epigenetics, some views are exaggerated, so I wanted to remind people not to get too carried away with what we think epigenetics can do. Actually, the molecular-level, genetic-level information we inherit is indeed from our DNA, and there is no clear evidence that there are strong epigenetic factors.
Observer Network: Let's move on to the next level - proteins. The achievements of AI in the field of protein folding have been a hot topic in recent years, and your book also mentions it. However, you say: "Rather than saying AlphaFold solved the super problem of protein folding, it's more like sidestepping the problem. The algorithm isn't predicting how a polypeptide chain folds, but rather predicting the result after the polypeptide chain folds." In your view, what other areas of biology could effectively apply AI?
Philip Ball: I think AI has many useful ways in biology. AlphaFold is one of them, which can predict the structure from the protein sequence or the gene sequence that codes for it, which is a very useful thing.
Whether the prediction is accurate enough to develop drugs is another issue, but it provides a very good starting point.
I think in the entire field of biology, we face similar problems, where there may be a lot of data, but it's hard to know how to use these data to find patterns that explain biological phenomena. This is exactly the kind of problem where AI technology is very useful now.
People are also trying to use it to understand how genes are regulated. For example, being able to predict how the activity of genes will change if a cell or organism experiences a certain situation. This is where AI can be extremely useful, helping to solve these very complex problems.
After AlphaFold, more AI tools have emerged, such as the open-source OpenFold
My concern is that people have been trying to understand what actually happens in these systems, but AI sometimes replaces this effort. That's the problem with AI, it just derives results from data, without truly explaining how these two are connected mechanistically.
I think biology still needs to understand the mechanism. To truly grasp complex problems, it's not just about having a predictive computer program.
Observer Network: The next question is related to this. One of the deepest impressions I had from reading "How Life Works" is that you repeatedly raise many biological questions that may not have exact answers. In this sense, using strategies that derive results empirically from massive metadata to "sidestep the problem," is this actually a valuable way to understand life, even if we don't know the underlying mechanism?
Philip Ball: AI definitely has its use in this regard. But I think of a good example that shows how AI can bypass some important issues.
Gene regulation is very complex, involving many different molecular activities and signals, which are integrated in some way, ultimately deciding whether a gene is turned on or off. If we use AI for this, it might say, okay, if this signal is present, the activity of that gene seems to increase or decrease, but it won't tell us why.
And now we know that in human cells and many other complex animal cells, structures called biomolecular condensates are formed. They are loose spherical structures, somewhat like droplets in the cell, separated from the rest of the liquid in the cell. They are independent phases, like oil and vinegar in salad dressing.
Recent research suggests that although there is no membrane, biomolecular condensates also have some structure phys.org
It has now been discovered that these condensates are everywhere, not only in gene regulation, but also in various cellular processes, such as how cells respond to stress, how DNA is repaired, etc. I remember that humans only understood this biological structure about 15 years ago. AI won't find this for us, it can't do that.
Understanding this mechanism, and the physical structures involved, is very valuable for thinking about how we intervene in these structures. So, if we try to jump directly from data to a certain answer or prediction, without investigating the actual molecular biological processes in the middle, it is very dangerous.
Observer Network: In "How Life Works," you have a rare description of the cell that impressed me: "Is it like a factory? It looks more like a crowded nightclub." We might be misled by beautiful videos of microtubule networks, and one of the main ways cell biologists seek answers is by using more refined single-molecule microscopes, such as confocal microscopes. To study such a noisy environment, besides moving towards single-molecule, what other options do we have?
Philip Ball: One of the most useful technologies in recent years is cryo-electron microscopy, which basically rapidly freezes the cell, freezing everything in place, and then observes it with an electron microscope, which can show the positions of all different molecules in great detail.
There are other technologies being applied as well. There are clever techniques that can attach fluorescent labels to individual molecules, so we can see their positions. We can attach different colored labels, thus tracking many different molecules simultaneously and begin to map out their activities in the cell.
Indeed, there are now many ways to do this, but they all face the problem I mentioned in my book. The cell is not like those beautiful videos, where you see a molecule working in space, then another molecule flying over like a controlled drone to dock, then flying away.
Animations of microtubules, which only reflect one aspect of the cell, the reality is far more complex
In reality, when we observe the inside of a cell, it is many different molecules mixed together, tightly packed and colliding. Just one glance would make you wonder how this system works.
There are various answers to this. One way is cell compartmentalization, which is one of the roles of the condensates, forming temporary compartments to exclude some substances and accommodate others.
The old view was that, despite these collisions, proteins only recognize specific targets, so they ignore everything else and wait for the target they should bind to. This is sometimes true, but we now know that sometimes it is not. Many proteins are not as picky about their binding partners, they actually do not have a nice folded shape, but are more disordered and wiggly, which seems to be an important feature of proteins, but it makes the problem more difficult, because you no longer have that very special molecular recognition, so there must be something else happening. We must re-examine some basic questions to understand the molecular chaos in the cell.
Observer Network: You also mention "agency" and "purpose" (agency and purpose) multiple times in the book, which many biologists tend to avoid. It is generally believed that whether it is the response of a cell to the environment or human thought, these are just the results of "natural selection."
Philip Ball: I think, ultimately, it all comes down to how to understand the concept of "agency." To me, it's very strange that many biologists are so resistant to the concept of agency, because it refers to facts that are constantly happening around us. Whether in our own lives or in the behaviors of other animals, especially higher animals, they make decisions, make choices.
Certainly, we can explore how these decisions are made. We can observe which neurons are firing, etc., but the decision is made by the entire organism.
Imagine a fox chasing a rabbit, these two organisms are making very quick decisions at every moment, one wants to escape, the other wants to catch it. This is what I mean by agency, the ability of a living organism to change itself and change its environment to try to achieve a goal, such as how to run, etc. In this case, the fox's goal is to catch the rabbit, and the rabbit's goal is to escape.
We can say, okay, this is just evolution programming in them, they are just automatically doing these things, their ultimate goal is survival and reproduction.
Both can be correct, without damaging the concept of agency. We can be quite sure that whatever is going on in the minds of the fox and the rabbit, it's not "How do I reproduce, how do I survive," but "I must not be eaten," or "I must eat this thing." So, organisms have goals, and it's wrong to say that all goals are ultimately about survival and reproduction.
We also have goals in our daily lives, my next goal is to have a cup of coffee, trying to understand this from the perspective of survival and reproduction is unreasonable.
I think we need to consider the immediate, present goals of organisms. Especially, if we are just machine-like, gene-controlled systems, the genes say you must survive and reproduce, how do these immediate goals arise?
In my opinion, the whole reason we have brains is not to carry out the commands of genes, but to allow genes not to have to solve every problem we will encounter. Everyone encounters challenges and situations they have never encountered in their lives every day, and genes cannot know what to do in such cases. It is evolution that gave us brains to do this, to make instant decisions, and these decisions do not have an obvious best answer, certainly not an answer that helps us survive and reproduce.
This is the essence of being an agent, being a living organism. We must recognize that this is a real property in biology, and it actually extends all the way to a single cell.
A cell must make decisions that are not as complex as we do, but it is not always clear what the best answer is. So it must do something a bit like what the brain does. It must integrate a lot of information about itself and the situation, and find some way to act. How do living organisms do this? This is what we need to try to understand by using the word "agency." In my view, agency is ultimately what distinguishes living things from non-living things. The ability to make situational decisions and have goals is what separates us from stones or water. This is actually the core of biology, the meaning of being alive.
This is why I think, if we refuse to examine agency, refuse to acknowledge purpose in biology, we are actually denying life itself, denying that it is different from stones or water.
Observer Network: But you mentioned a paradox in the book, that human thinking may contradict the "purpose" of "survival and reproduction." In the book, there is an example of a parent-child conversation about having children, where the parents think the child choosing to study quantum gravity theory has deviated from the "established goal" of survival and reproduction. In real life, do you have such conversations with your children? If a child explicitly states that they have no desire to have children, would you advise them against it?
Philip Ball: I think this is entirely the individual's choice, and I have no responsibility to interfere or influence it. This is a personal decision, and it is a perfect example of why saying "all goals are defined by reproduction" is insufficient. Some people choose not to reproduce for various reasons, and this is the nature of our brain, which are quite complex systems that allow us to survive in the environment.
For many of us, probably most of us, the brain does help us reproduce, giving us the drive to reproduce. But the brain doesn't necessarily do that.
If you create something so complex, it might take another path, and you get this result. You have to accept that it doesn't necessarily follow the "instructions" of the genes. This also explains why agency is not just something natural selection created for us to survive and reproduce.
Observer Network: Are you worried that humans will become extinct because of too few births?
Philip Ball: No, I'm not worried about that. I do worry about some possible social problems, of course, and in the short term, if the birth rate declines, it may lead to population problems, with an imbalanced aging population, and young laborers needing to support them in some way. There are difficulties here.
But we need to understand why more people choose not to have children or have fewer children. This may be because, economically speaking, it's difficult for them to do so. It may also be because, and I think in many places it is indeed the case, increased opportunities for women in education and careers mean they make such choices, and I think it's definitely a good thing for women to have opportunities.
Observer Network: Maybe we need artificial wombs to solve this problem.
Philip Ball: Well, some people are thinking that this might be the answer. But I really don't see how, even if this is possible, it would solve the problem. Because then who would take care of the children? Who is responsible for them? There are all sorts of psychological issues, and issues about whether it's equivalent to being in the womb medically.
Scientists培育羊胚胎 in an artificial womb, screenshot of video
Observer Network: I feel that the biosphere itself has a "purpose," which is to produce intelligent life capable of interstellar migration, thereby expanding the biosphere, for example, turning Mars into another Earth. Do you think humans are part of such a "purpose," or do our cognitive abilities allow us to transcend it?
Philip Ball: I don't think this is a purpose clearly given to us by nature. Some people think this, feeling they have a responsibility to expand to the universe, like Musk. But I disagree with this view.
This seems to be a very difficult task. The universe, in general, wants to kill us. Not that it really "wants" to, but it really will kill us, because it is extremely inhospitable.
But the reason I don't agree is not just that. Earth is an extremely hospitable planet, it's great, providing everything we need. So, if humans have a sense of purpose, it seems to be to live healthily and harmoniously here.
I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe, some people think life origin is an extremely difficult thing. But I doubt that if the conditions are right, life would likely appear. Whether it will develop to our level or higher intelligent life is another question. But I'm not too worried about that.
The fact that matter can become life is an extraordinary thing, and I'm quite sure it will happen elsewhere. I'm just glad to be safely on Earth.
Observer Network: Why go to the trouble of going somewhere else, right. Talking about intelligent beings, I think intelligence is one of the most typical examples of "emergence." You also mention emergence in the book.
I previously talked about this with Pulitzer Prize winner Mukherjee - you also cited him in other questions - and he thinks the word "emergence" is a code or a placeholder for things we don't understand. A hundred years ago, people would see wound healing as an "emergent" phenomenon, but now we know how wound healing works. He doesn't oppose the word, but thinks it's a placeholder, allowing us to put some things aside and believe we will eventually understand it, just not knowing the reasonable explanation now. I'd like to hear your opinion, do you agree with his statements?
Philip Ball: No, although I have great respect for Mukherjee, I don't agree with him.
Observer Network: After reading "How Life Works," I also guessed that you wouldn't agree.
Philip Ball: This may be because we come from different disciplines, he is a doctor, and I received training as a physicist.
Sometimes people use "emergence" in a mysterious and vague way, and usually use it to talk about things we don't understand, and I agree with Mukherjee's feeling on this.
But for a physicist, emergence is an old and completely uncontroversial concept. Because I studied statistical physics of phase transitions decades ago, I saw it. For example, understanding how water freezes, or how water evaporates into steam. These are phase transitions, and they are examples of emergence.
Consider the case of water freezing, it's not that a particular water molecule freezes at 0 degrees Celsius, it's as if the whole system "decides" to do this at once. This is a collective effect. No matter how carefully you look, you can never predict this emergent phenomenon by observing a single water molecule. You must have many water molecules interacting.
Scientists once speculated about the emergence process of water freezing, how many molecules are needed at minimum，《Science》
To me, this is emergence. It occurs in such systems, where there are many interacting components. These components can be as simple as water molecules or as complex as all the molecules in our bodies. This is a very widely accepted phenomenon, when you have such a system, you get collective effects, and the entire state of the system suddenly changes.
Life itself is an emergent phenomenon, we can break it down into molecules, and then it is no longer alive. To understand how this happens, it hasn't been done yet, we don't have enough understanding of such complex systems to describe it.
But we can see that when an emergent change to a new state occurs, the fine details are no longer important. The details of what a single water molecule is doing are not important, and it will still freeze.
The details of which neurons are firing in the brain are usually not important, and we can still decide whether to make a cup of coffee, and each time we decide to make coffee, the brain state is not completely the same, in fact, it's very different. But there is still that emergent decision.
So we know that emergence is real. It involves discarding or, as physicists say, coarse-graining fine-grained information, so we don't have to worry about the details, the important thing is the overall picture. Understanding emergence in this way has made progress, that is, how to switch from one level of behavior to a higher level.
Therefore, I don't think emergence is a mysterious word to搪塞 us not understanding things. I think it can, and is being transformed into real science, but it is currently a scientific inquiry.
Observer Network: This echoes a sentence in your book: "Each layer of life organization has its own rules, which are insensitive to the details of the lower layers. They have a kind of autonomy." In my view, one missing piece in the book is ecology. Ecology itself seems to be across multiple levels of individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems. The details of the upper layer's structural rules sometimes have noticeable responses, such as the extinction of key species. From an ecological macro-level perspective, cutting down to the micro-level, perhaps it's another way to find the commonality of life?
Philip Ball: Yes, I didn't go all the way up to the highest level of life, but stopped at the organism level, and above that there are higher levels, to ecosystems, and even the entire biosphere, the same considerations apply to those levels.
You are absolutely right, in an ecosystem, if a particular organism dies, the whole system may not be affected. But if an entire species goes extinct, sometimes there is an impact, sometimes not.
To me, this echoes what we see in genes, that if one of our genes mutates in a certain way, sometimes it has a real impact, like in cystic fibrosis, but most of the time it doesn't. Our bodies can compensate at a higher level, allowing them to continue working as before.
In the 1980s and 1990s, biologists began to knock out specific genes and observe the effects on the entire organism. They were sure that if they knocked out a gene essential for a biological process, the organism would die. But actually, what often happened was that the organism seemed not to "notice" the change, and lived happily as before.
I think this is the fascinating aspect of biology as an emergent phenomenon, a "leaky emergence." Each layer of the hierarchy is not completely isolated from the details of the layer below.
It is partial emergence. Occasionally, those details are indeed important, for example, a gene for an individual, or a species for the entire ecosystem. This is why understanding biology is much more complicated than understanding the freezing of water. It also makes it more rich and challenging.
Observer Network: Yes, I'm fascinated by this. When I was young, I also wanted to pursue these answers. There seems to be some similarity between the "leaky emergence" between various layers. If we can explain various emergent phenomena and summarize some common principles, would that be the "holy grail" of biology?
Philip Ball: In a way, I think there are common principles. I also tried to propose some principles of emergence in the beginning of "How Life Works."
Biology can create systems that are stable against small fluctuations. Overall, they do. This is why we are still alive now.
The more we understand biology, the more incredible it is that it functions normally. Any organism surviving is amazing. So I think there are universal principles.
One principle is called combinatorial logic. Biology seems to often operate in groups, that is, not by a specific molecule or signal determining whether something else happens, like a gene being turned on or off, but by a whole set of signals, like a small committee, collectively making a decision. This is another way to make things more stable, it means that sometimes even if a couple of members are not there, the committee can still make a decision, and it doesn't depend on everything being in the right place at the right time.
We can begin to discern principles of how life systems work at all levels, including the ecosystem level, but I'm not sure if we have reached the stage of integrating these principles into some grand theory of life.
Moreover, I suspect there may not be such a theory. Although there may be some universal principles, we can see that the factors involved at one scale are very different from those at a lower scale.
When we think about how tissues grow during embryonic development, the softness and hardness of the tissue, how it bends and folds becomes important. These considerations basically don't apply at the molecular level. Molecules do bend and fold, but they don't have the kind of mechanics that exist at the tissue level. At different levels, different physics are at play, and the universality we can obtain is limited.
But I think that regarding how the properties of emergence evolve, how they evolve reliably and stably, and how they operate in the face of small fluctuations and failures, it is still possible to gain some overarching understanding.
Observer Network: But from the book, I get the impression that you want to challenge but may not be able to overcome one point, which is that people always want to find the single secret of life. Does physics set a bad precedent here? They have a theory of everything in physics, right? Physics' holy grail. But if we cannot reach the holy grail of biology, will this weaken the public's enthusiasm for biology?
Philip Ball: First of all, I want to say that only a small part of physicists believe in the theory of everything, and most physicists, like me working in condensed matter physics, have always thought it was absurd. Because we know that some emergent phenomena can never be explained by a single theory.
But you're right, physics gives that impression. I think that's the problem. If you have a simple story to tell, like Richard Dawkins, the author of "The Selfish Gene," who has a simple story about genes or the root of all biology, people can grasp it, and it makes them feel satisfied.
If your story is "actually much more complicated, and there are many other things happening," of course people won't be interested, and they won't be satisfied. So, we must find some other better stories to tell, which acknowledge all this complexity and better reflect the current understanding of biology.
"How Life Works" is my first attempt to start this conversation, but that's it. I don't know what the story is yet, I'm still trying to explore it.
I think this is a story centered on agency. And telling or reminding people that you are an autonomous agent, you are not a robot controlled by genes, or programmed by evolution, perhaps people can respond to it. Because it reflects our daily experience, but it's just the beginning.
I completely agree that one of the tasks of biology is to find better metaphors and better narratives to better reflect the current understanding of biology, rather than clinging to those developed in the 1970s.
Observer Network: You have written a book, "Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another," which some book reviews have described as "the physics of society." I think social phenomena are also a level of life, combining ecosystems, intelligence, and emergence. Looking back now, how do you evaluate the book "Critical Mass"?
Philip Ball: If I were to write this book today, I would make some changes. Obviously, there have been many new research findings in the past 20 years that weren't available then. But the basic principles I discussed in that book still apply, and they are actually related to "How Life Works," because I was studying emergent phenomena as well.
But in that case, it was phenomena like traffic jams. This is another good example of how detailed information becomes unimportant. On the highway, each driver has thoughts, with all kinds of things in their minds, but these are irrelevant to whether a traffic jam occurs.
What's really important is the traffic density, and how drivers react to each other, trying not to get too close or crash into each other. You can simulate this process with a very simple system that has no complex cognitive abilities, but not because the drivers became that way, but because all those details are unimportant.
The same consideration applies to the social level. We can see the emergence of these phenomena, which sometimes have similar characteristics. Sometimes we build "structures" in society, specifically roads and cities, to give them stability, so they won't stop operating the moment a road must be closed. But this seems to happen organically.
In "Critical Mass," I said that cities look like organisms, with their own growth rules, seemingly immune to planners' control attempts. Planners can control to some extent, just like doctors can influence the workings of the body to some extent, but the body follows its own path, and cities follow their own path, and control has its limits. So I think there are actually many similarities between these two books.
Observer Network: You have also written a book, "The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China." My last question is, why did you choose Chinese rivers, rather than the Nile, the Danube, the Mississippi, or the Amazon?
Philip Ball: The most direct answer is that I feel I know China better. You might imagine that I know more about cities around the Danube. But before the pandemic, I often came to China and had collaborations with Chinese institutions, and I regretted not being able to go back afterwards.
I had written about water from a scientific perspective before, and then suddenly realized that water seems to be central to many aspects of Chinese culture and civilization, which is well justified.
China has some rivers that are prone to major floods, especially the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, which have extremely important historical significance, and sometimes a flood or a series of floods can lead to dynastic changes. Water is also a carrier for discussing Chinese history and Chinese philosophy, especially in Daoism, where the image of "water" is central.
So exploring water seems to be an unusual but very productive way to explore Chinese political history, philosophy, culture, and even the development of Chinese language and poetry, because water has played such an important role in the process of Chinese civilization.
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