Useful resources

Betony Adams reviews Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, by Sara Imari Walker.

Of all the big unanswered questions in science, it is the mystery of life that most goes to the heart of human experience. What is life is a question that has intrigued some of the greatest minds in science, not least the founding figures of quantum mechanics, such as Schrodinger, who wrote a book about the subject. Sara Imari Walker’s recent book, Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence, outlines the history and context of this question and the advances that have been made towards answering it.

Perhaps what makes life so difficult to explain is the lack of an accepted consensus on how we define life, and the book begins with a discussion of the various ways in which this definition has been attempted. Walker, a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist by training, then details the role that physics – which is arguably the most fundamental theory we have of the universe – might play in quantifying and understanding life. In particular she explains the principles of assembly theory, as a way to describe living systems.

Assembly theory, developed by Walker and fellow scientists, models the complexity of entities as a measure of how difficult it is, how many steps it takes, to assemble this entity from its fundamental constituent pieces. Walker goes on to explain how this approach to modelling living systems is not only experimentally testable but widens our ideas of what it means to be alive, from the confines of the biology we recognise on Earth, to what may be a far more universal phenomenon.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Quarterly Review 10: December 2024

Alistair Nunn reviews A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith.

The authors of the recent book A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through? are a scientist and an illustrator, and this is a book you should read to cure you of any thought of trying to build a city on Mars, or even going there in the short term. It is well-researched and written, easy to read, and very funny in places, but with a serious message: mankind is not ready to build any kind of long-lasting outpost on Mars, especially if the reason is to try and save humanity.

It is a dream, and perhaps in the very long term, is feasible, but we are nowhere near ready for it at the moment. Something that perhaps Elon Musk has not quite understood. Even the authors, who are self-confessed space geeks, had to have a bit of rethink after they started doing the research. The reasons are multiple, ranging from our understanding of the health risks in space, which we know ourselves are far from complete, not helped because astronauts tend to be guarded about their health, the reliability of the technology, the importance of reproduction, the incomplete laws about who might own what in space – but perhaps the biggest, is that socially we, that is humans, have not learnt to even get along on Earth.

One of the big drivers of the colonisation idea is to protect our species in case of a catastrophe on Earth, but at the moment, until we learn to live in peace, it is entirely possible that trying to colonise space will increase the chances of such an event. History teaches us this. The other problem is that any colony will have to be entirely self-dependent, which means it will have to be very large, with well thought out laws, which of course, will have to evolve from those less effective ones that exist at the moment. In short, the consensus of the book is that until we have sorted out the laws, socially evolved, and have the technology to move a lot of people very quickly to Mars, safely, we have a long way to go.

Should we explore space? Certainly, as it is in our nature, but we need to do a lot more research and development, for instance, building a permanent base on the moon is a good idea, as it will give us time not just to work out the laws, politics and social side of things, but also the technology, and critically, how to keep people healthy. In summary, this is a thought provoking and entertaining read, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in humanity’s future in space.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Quarterly Review 9: September 2024

Betony Adams reviews How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology, by Philip Ball.

It has been two decades since the human genome was successfully sequenced. Philip Ball’s new book, How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology, opens with all the high excitement of an era in which a better understanding of our genetic machinery promised to unlock the mysterious animating force at the heart of living organisms. Our knowledge of the genome, however, hasn’t quite lived up to this promise. Advances in genetics have given us great insight into the importance of the materials – such as proteins – out of which life is built. But determining just how these blocks are assembled into living organisms remains frustratingly elusive.

The author drives this point home with a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite all our medical knowledge, the progress of the disease in individual patients has proved difficult to predict. The book goes on to unravel the stranglehold that genes have on the biological imagination. Ball outlines the important role that DNA and proteins play while situating this within the wider framework of new ideas about just how flexible living organisms are within the bounds of their genetic expression. These new ideas include other ways in which biology manages and stores information, such as membrane potential, and Michael Levin’s research into bioelectricity and regeneration is referenced a number of times in the book. The author also addresses notions of agency in approaches to understanding life, where agency can imply a number of ideas, including the pursuit of goals.

Agency in the context of biology has become somewhat of a contentious term, Ball suggests, but to fully understand how life works the subject of agency, purpose, and intelligence will need to be addressed in a rigorous, scientific manner. Only then might we be able to fully answer the question that has puzzled physicists, biologists and philosophers alike: What is life?

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Quarterly Review 8: June 2024

Alistair Nunn reviews Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding, by Daniel E. Lieberman.

Daniel Lieberman is a widely published and acclaimed evolutionary biologist. He also does a lot of running, often barefoot. As part of his research, he has spent a lot of time studying hunter-gatherer groups, in particular, how they spend their days in relation to rest and physical activity, and how this may relate to health. The truth is that hunter-gatherers do tend to be much healthier than the average Westerner in that they suffer far less from “modern” diseases, such as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular problems. Interestingly, although they do move a lot, they also spend a fair amount of time sitting, but critically, most of their physical activity is necessary, for instance, hunting and finding food, or carrying tools and other items. Their diet is also generally what modern doctors might define as “healthy”. What they don’t tend to do is formalised and structured exercise.

In this book the author makes the point that although we clearly need to move to remain healthy, we also, by nature, tend to resist it. The truth is that a Western lifestyle has made it very easy to be lazy, but this is perhaps, from an evolutionary perspective, entirely normal.

This is a well written and fascinating book that although fully referenced, is easily accessible to the lay reader. It provides considerable insight into why and how humans move, and how we are different from many other animals, and how this likely gave rise to our success as a species. Some of it is quite surprising. It also discusses some of the history of how physical activity has been perceived and portrayed over the years, and why, perhaps, we are now struggling with the concept that exercise is, indeed, one of the best medicines.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Newsletter 7: March 2024

Betony Adams reviews The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars, by Jo Marchant.

In The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars, author Jo Marchant reflects, among other things, on the evolution and controversy of the field of chronobiology, as indicated above in the paper on circadian rhythms. Indeed, the term that has come to represent this area of research – circadian, meaning “about a day” – was first coined as an oblique insult aimed at the US biologist Frank Brown, who had rocked the field by suggesting that our internal clocks are in fact coupled to environmental cues, including gravitational fields. Marchant goes on to write:

"The disagreement reflected a deeper, philosophical split regarding the relationship that living creatures have with our planet and the wider cosmos. Are we autonomous, self-running machines, or is life in constant, subtle communication with the Earth, sun, moon, and even stars?"

Circadian rhythms are fundamentally important to the proper function of biological systems and human physiology. They can change how we respond to infection or medicine. Indeed, there is some evidence that the month in which we are born may affect our risk of diseases such as dementia, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia. As we enter an era in which it is possible, for the first time in human history, to conceive of travelling to and settling on other planets, we need reminding that we are intimately coupled to the rhythms and conditions of the environment in which we evolved: the Earth. Marchant’s book eloquently describes the many ways in which this coupling unfolds, physiologically but also in our systems of meaning, the monuments and artworks that mark us out as uniquely human. We have looked towards – and wondered about – the sun and stars since we first began to question our place in the cosmos.

This reminder seems very timely in light of The Guy Foundation’s space health programme, which aims to tease out exactly how biology has adapted to its terrestrial environment and what this may mean for future space travel and settlement. Alongside the sense of wonder that these new horizons elicit are a number of critical questions that remain to be answered.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Newsletter 6: December 2023

Betony Adams reviews Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Peter Attia.

In a recent Guy Foundation meeting with flight surgeon and astronaut Tom Marshburn, the conversation turned to the subject of space health research as a microcosm for understanding terrestrial ageing. Tom mentioned that The Guy Foundation might be interested in Peter Attia’s recent book, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, which discusses the ways we might extend not just our lifespan, but also our healthspan. Many of the ideas expressed by Attia resonate strongly with The Guy Foundation’s own interests in the metabolic underpinnings of ageing and the ways in which a better understanding of these metabolic processes might be leveraged to achieve compressed mortality.

The notion of compressed mortality is central to Attia’s argument in the book. It is not enough to add extra decades to a human life, if those decades are spent in pain and illness. More importantly, we should aim at decreasing the years in which age renders us unable to enjoy life, not only adding years but adding worthwhile years. This is what Attia refers to as healthspan. In his opinion the practise of medicine needs a paradigm shift in how it frames health and disease. There have been two distinct eras in medical history, he argues: Medicine 1.0 which spans those centuries from the ancient world of Hippocrates until the advent of germ theory and the scientific method, and Medicine 2.0 which is still with us today.

Medicine 2.0 has made great strides in a number of contexts but despite these advances – and its success in treating acute disease – it has made, as the author puts it, scant progress against those diseases conventionally associated with old age. Attia refers to these as the Four Horsemen diseases: heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease and type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction. In order to make progress against these diseases, he maintains we need a new way of thinking, a Medicine 3.0, which does not wait until the disease has manifested itself before intervention but rather practises proactive medicine, identifying risk factors years and even decades in advance and implementing a strategic response to these.

Outlive is an illuminating read on the agency we do have with respect to healthy ageing, despite our genetic lottery. Attia notes that, despite diabetes ranking behind the other Horsemen diseases as a leading cause of death, he believes it plays an underlying role in all of these diseases, which all show evidence of metabolic dysfunction. As we emerge from the acute phases of the COVID pandemic into a new era of chronic conditions such as long-COVID, a better understanding of how metabolism underpins, not only ageing, but disease in general, could see the consolidation of the era of Medicine 3.0.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Newsletter 5: September 2023

Betony Adams reviews Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake.

The secret lives and special properties of fungi are a topic of growing interest. In the March Newsletter we reported that Foundation research collaborators Philip Kurian, Founding Director of the Quantum Biology Laboratory at Howard University and Mike Levin, Distinguished Professor of Biology, Director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, had been awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Matter-to-Life grant to investigate problem-solving behaviour in syncytial slime moulds.

While the animal and plant kingdoms have generated substantial research, fungi, at least in the opinion of mycologist and author Merlin Sheldrake, have been to some extent neglected. His recent book Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures addresses the question in exquisite detail. In the context of these fascinating organisms, we are still somewhat in the dark. This is to a degree literal, and Sheldrake describes how the visible signs of fungi above ground – the moulds and the mushrooms – are complemented by the vast filamentous networks of underground mycelia.

Despite their relative obscurity, fungi are essential to life as we recognise it. In the barren environments of the early Earth, fungi led the way: breaking down rock into soil; supplying root-like systems before plants evolved their own. Without fungi, we would be buried beneath the weight of the dead. They are masters of decomposition, even offering potential solutions for the toxic waste – nuclear, oil, plastic – that is the long shadow cast by human advancement. Their role in the discovery of antibiotics changed the face of modern medicine. They are even implicated in our more everyday pleasures. In his vivid description of an episode of truffle hunting, the author elaborates on the language of volatile compounds that fungi use to communicate and to seduce the noses of both animals and humans.

Sheldrake’s fungal interests span numerous scientific disciplines, even touching on questions of consciousness. Intelligence is almost exclusively attributed to humankind. But what of the ability that fungal networks demonstrate to communicate information – at least in part by electrical signals reminiscent of neural activation potentials – and to store this information – in a manner that looks a lot like memory. Indeed, while optimisation problems can be computationally expensive, researchers have found that fungi can solve network questions such as the travelling salesman problem remarkably efficiently. There are also the intriguing ways in which they can hijack the agency of other species, and the Zombie-ant fungus is a particularly disturbing example of this. Fungi are – quite literally – mind bending, their production of psychedelic compounds such as psylocibin offering a new way to think about – and treat – the mind and its disorders.

But their propensity for revelation is not merely chemical. The example they hold up – their incredible resourcefulness – offers new ways in which to imagine our own conflicted relationship with resources. Sheldrake sketches out a different idea of what it means to be alive, an idea that recognises the power of relationships and the entangled lives of all living organisms. In a world that seems increasingly skewed towards the needs and desires of a single species, this is a compelling metaphor.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Newsletter 4: June 2023

Professor Alistair Nunn, The Guy Foundation’s Director of Science, reviews We are Electric: The New Science of Our Body's Electrome by Sally Adee.

Sally Adee’s interest in the world of biological electricity began when she experienced a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) technique aimed at enhancing people’s ability to become sharp shooters. While immersed in a virtual reality set up, her ability dramatically improved. The experience spurred her to investigate the world of bioelectricity. The result is this book, which delves into the deep history and speculates on the eventual future of bioelectricity and suggests that understanding the “electrome” could play a pivotal role in the evolution of medicine.

Overall, this is a very well written book, with an easy style that should enable any reader to engage in the subject and learn something. It is not a deep scientific treatise on the subject, but it is referenced, and cites many of the main sources of literature. It is also clear that the author has taken the time to talk to some of the leading scientists in the area, such as Mike Levin.

What this book does very well is to discuss the main protagonists in history and explain how the concepts fell in an out of favour. For instance, the battle between Volta and Luigi Galvani in the 18th Century, and whether the newly discovered electricity should be viewed from the point of view of physics or biology – it all shows how good ideas can sometimes backfire when pushed too hard, risking the subject becoming viewed as quackery. Alas, this is something that is still very much evident today, resulting in some fields taking many years to come back “in vogue”. Indeed, this particular battle between physicists and biologists about the role of electricity in biology was repeated both in the 19th and 20th Centuries and was made worse by discoveries in genetics and pharmacology, which tended to draw the focus away from bioelectricity. But in the 21st Century, as the author suggests, the importance of bioelectricity is being revisited with new vigour.

The book skips over the work of some key players such as Alexander Gurwitsch, who introduced the concept of the morphogenetic field in the 1920s, and Robert Becker – who pioneered research into regeneration and electricity in the middle part of the 20th Century. Important contributions to the understanding of bio-electromagnetism have also been made by scientists such as Herbert Fröhlich and Jiři Porkorný and others, such as Nick Lane, have discussed why we are electric beings in the first place and how this may have arisen. Although it could be argued the contributions of these pioneers may have been at a deeper level than the target audience of the book, one wonders if a mention would have been helpful in pointing the reader towards the world of quantum biology.

The final chapter is perhaps the most thought provoking, as it may well encourage the reader to view things differently – and this would apply both to the lay and the professional scientific reader. As Mike Levin says, we need to stop thinking about genetics as determining body shape, but instead think about the morphogenetic field and the bioelectric code it may contain. The key here is that there is now a lot of evidence to suggest that it is ion channels, and gap junctions, that are playing a central role in generating these morphogenetic fields. Taking this a step further, it therefore suggests that any drug that modulates these channels is thus altering the morphogenetic field, to either harmful or helpful effect. It is also interesting that many anaesthetics alter ion channel function, which might tell us something about the nature of consciousness.

In summary, this is a book that is definitely worth reading, for both the lay person and the more focussed researcher in search of a better understanding of the history of this field. From the scientific perspective, it reinforces the simple fact that life is all about the dissipation of energy and that structure emerges from the movement of fundamental particles, such as electrons and protons, which of course means fields must be involved. From a personal perspective, this book highlights a gap in our knowledge, and perhaps a way of thinking and a scientific approach, as it has not addressed the relationship between role of electricity in life and how it is powered. We evolved from prokaryotes, who in turn, evolved from abiotic conditions on the early earth: understanding this could well help explain the origins of bioelectricity itself.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Newsletter 3: March 2023

Dr Nathan Babcock, postdoctoral researcher, Quantum Biology Lab at Howard University, sent us the following review of A Worthwhile Medicine: How the world's first cannabis-based medication was approved, by Dr Geoffrey W. Guy.

A Worthwhile Medicine is more than a worthwhile read

Geoffrey W. Guy’s account of the creation of the world’s first licensed cannabis-based medicine is compelling and engrossing: Combining personal memoir with professional commentary and socioeconomic saga, the story weaves diverse elements into a cohesive narrative that offers the reader a unique chance to watch history unfold. Yet this epic speaks for itself. Rather than promoting the book with glowing reviews designed to entice the buyer, the dust cover’s inside jacket grabs the reader's attention with real news headlines that chronicle GW Pharmaceuticals’ precipitous rise to the top.

Beginning with the chapter Listening to Patients, the book’s main theme is the critical importance of listening to clients and shareholders in earnest and with compassion, revealing insight into Prof. Guy’s success as a doctor, an entrepreneur, and a storyteller. In classic style, the prose is littered with adages and witticisms to boost the acumen of both business leaders and philosophers alike, laying out the course of one doctor’s life starting with hospital practice before leaping to industry and pharmaceutical research specifically, until one twist of fate led him to a half-day event at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society about the medical use of cannabis. The rest, they say, was history.

Readers interested in the intricacies of building a multi-billion dollar business while navigating political pitfalls and regulatory red tape will find this to be a riveting read. Yet what captures the imagination is the synthesis of the author’s lifetime of experience with pharmaceuticals into the conviction that present-day pharmaceutical science is inadequate to describe the action of many common drugs. Combining this conviction with the audacity to bet his fortune on the science of the future, Prof. Guy leaves no doubt that his story is still history in the making.

The final chapter on Quantum Biology offers more questions than
answers, which The Guy Foundation aims to unveil. Much research on quantum biology has focused on the search for quantum coherence and non-trivial dynamical effects in biological systems. While this focus has great academic merit, The Guy Foundation unabashedly seeks to develop this new science into therapeutic practice. Will it hold the secret to quantum medicine? Prof. Guy surely aims to find out.

This review appeared in The Guy Foundation Newsletter 2: December 2022