Andrew Cohen - Wonders of Life

‘How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?’

Erwin Schrödinger

I suppose this is a most difficult thing to accept. The human condition seems special; our conscious experience feels totally divorced from the mechanistic world of atoms and forces, and perhaps even from the ‘lower forms’ of life. If there is a central argument through the five films and chapters in Wonders of Life, it is that this feeling is an emergent illusion created by the sheer complexity of our arrangement of atoms. It must be, because the fundamental similarities between all living things outweigh the differences. If an alien biochemist had only two cells from Earth, one from a blade of grass and one from a human being, it would be immediately obvious that the cells come from the same planet, and are intimately related. If that sounds unbelievable, then this book is an attempt to convince you otherwise.

I write this in full appreciation of the so-called controversy surrounding Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. My original aim was to avoid the matter entirely, because I think there are no intellectually interesting issues raised in such a ‘debate’. But during the filming of this series I developed a deep irritation with the intellectual vacuity of those who actively seek to deny the reality of evolution and the science of biology in general. So empty is such a position, in the face of evidence collected over centuries, that it can only be politically motivated; there is not a hint of reason in it. And more than that, taking such a position closes the mind to the most wonderful story, and this is a tragedy for those who choose it, or worse, are forced into it through deficient teaching.

As someone who thinks about religion very little – I reject the label atheist because defining me in terms of the things I don’t believe would require an infinite list of nouns – I see no necessary contradiction between religion and science. By which I mean that if I were a deist, I would claim no better example of the skill and ingenuity of The Creator than in the laws of nature that allowed for the magnificent story of the origin and evolution of life on Earth, and their overwhelmingly beautiful expression in our tree of life. I am not a deist, philosopher or theologian, so I will make no further comment on the origin of the laws of nature that permitted life to evolve. I simply don’t know; perhaps someday we will find out. But be in no doubt that laws they are, and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is as precise and well tested as Einstein’s theories of relativity.

If this sounds a little strong, then perhaps it reveals my genuine excitement in learning about the sheer explanatory power of Darwin’s theory when coupled with recent advances in biochemistry and genetics. Modern biology is close, in my view, to answering Schrodinger’s ‘How’ question. There are unknowns to be sure, which is what makes the subject of these films doubly exciting. Some parts are speculative, but that is nothing to be ashamed of in science. Indeed, all science is provisional. When observations of nature contradict a theory, no matter how revered, ancient or popular, the theory will be unceremoniously and joyously ditched, and the search for a more accurate theory will be redoubled. The magnificent thing about Darwin’s explanation of the origin of species is that it has survived over a hundred and fifty years of precision observations, and in that it has outlasted Newton’s law of universal gravitation.

My favourite moment in the series is the final scene of the final film, which unusually, was filmed on our final evening; television shows are rarely made in chronological order. We found a tiny rocky island off the coast of northern Madagascar, no bigger than the average suburban garden, isolated in the warm waters of the Mozambique Channel. The idea was to sit down and chat about the experience of making the series, and film the result. I won’t tell you what I thought and said, because that should wait until the end of the book. But I do want to say one thing here in the introduction. I recall a conversation in March 2009, just before we started filming Wonders of the Solar System. Andrew, my co-author and executive producer, said that we would have achieved our goal if those who watched never again looked at the night sky in quite the same way. This is in the spirit of Feynman’s flower. Deeper understanding confers that most precious thing – wonder. A sky filled with tiny, twinkling lights is one thing, but a sky filled with other worlds is quite another. I have known this for virtually all my life, because I have always been an astronomer at heart. Perched on my island, thinking about what to say, I realised that I now felt precisely the same about a single blade of grass.

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