Review of the book 'the music of life' by Thomas Lemberger.
Tonight, Mahler's 8th Symphony will be performed. As the orchestra prepares, I cannot refrain from a little arithmetic gymnastics. There are almost 1,000 performers on stage, each playing over a range of two and a half octaves, one octave has 12 tones, that is 30,000 different tones in total. As many as the number of genes in our genome! The coincidence is of course anecdotal, but the sense of wonder is perhaps related: how can harmony emerge from such tumultuous interactions between so many different players?
In an insightful and audacious demonstration of how metaphors can illuminate the same conceptual problem from different angles, Noble begins by turning one of Richard Dawkins' metaphors upside down. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins wrote, "Now they [the genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence." Noble turns this around, and writes, "Now they are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence."
The Music of Life also explores the ultimate question of how consciousness emerges from our brains. We might wonder what happens at even higher levels, when human minds interact with each other. At this stage, it might be preferable to leave systems biology and return to the realm of music. Those who have played in a string quartet might have experienced those rare moments when musical inspiration emerges, as if by magic, from the perfect fusion between the musicians' minds into a purely collective musical achievement. In these moments, there is no room for a conductor; only for beauty and contemplation.
The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome
by Denis Noble
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