Life Versus Entropy Timo Hannay Explores a Study of Life That Takes up Where Erwin Schrödinger Left Off

BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT

Karl Wittfogel (P. Ball Nature 564, 186–188; human-driven existential threat. I hunted his discussion are some of the less-than-wise 2018). This held that early agriculture-based for a glimmer of a way forward, an until- corporate steps that have triggered successful empires such as Sumer in Mesopotamia now hidden path out of our political paraly- protest. rose through control of water, but tended sis, or a psychological glitch that could be Third, Barbier ignores the very real tension to squander it — leaving them vulnerable redirected. I searched for philosophers or between some of his sensible suggestions and to environmental degradation and outside social psychologists who could suggest ways many countries’ lack of economic, infrastruc- attack. of waking a sleeping world as the waters tural and governmental capacity to imple- More recent examples include the ‘land rise and fall. But on this key point, Barbier ment them. He acknowledges the mismatch rushes’ that gripped Australia, New Zealand, is silent. between water governance and institutions South Africa and North America from 1650 Second, he almost entirely omits ongoing and our needs. If this is to be a book for the to 1900. Barbier points out that these vast public opposition world, that obstacle course needs more atten- expansions of frontiers and economic gain to most of his pro- “Markets tion (perhaps even a list of on-the-ground were hugely dependent on claiming ‘free’ posed measures generally prerequisites for reform). And, although he water. That practice lingers. Markets gener- — such as tackling undervalue covers desalination well, many other kinds of ally undervalue lakes, waterways and aquifers the chronic under- lakes, processing barely get a look-in: water reuse, that are public goods. One impact of that, he pricing of water waterways and waste-water reprocessing and the extraction notes, is a “use it or lose it” attitude, encourag- — that is fuelled aquifers that are of resources from industrial and domestic ing territoriality and, ultimately, water wars. by factors such as waste waters. Barbier calls for an end to policy, markets aversion to taxes. public goods.” The Water Paradox is, however, jargon-free and governance that underprice water and Substantial hikes in and readable, brilliantly detailing both prob- allow it to be used as if it were plentiful. Our water prices, water markets and governance lems and remedies. I hark back to Barbier’s innovations, he argues, are generally geared involving greater private-sector dominance words on the fountains of Rome. To learn to expanding not reducing consumption. are anathema to many (M. Catley-Carlson that 2017 was the first time in 2,000 years He makes his points eloquently, offering a Nature 505, 288–289; 2014). that these hydro-engineering marvels were wellspring of facts and figures. I am impressed Large companies and other players were turned off in response to drought provokes by the dozens of scholarly lists, tables and chased out of water-asset management in the tears of sorrow and frustration. We know compendia, on history, current problems or 2000s, criticized by a number of non-govern- that it is happening. We do not act. That is tools for finding solutions to, for instance, mental organizations, the political left and the paradox. ■ types of water market that bring both benefits unions. That grass-roots movement is part of and perils. Those include river basins at risk a larger tide of resistance to globalization and Margaret Catley-Carlson has chaired from future conflicts; groundwater depletion multinational companies. It has affected the the Global Water Partnership, the World now and in the near future; water grabbers availability of investment capital, the direction Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council and the grabbed-from; and many more. of World Bank lending and significant strands on Water and the Suez Foresight Advisory But the book has three key gaps. of public opinion. Thus, in effect if not intent, Council, and was a member of the UN First, Barbier is so clear and thorough that Barbier prescribes an approach that is almost Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water I really hoped he would take on the para- certain to lead to discord, making it prob- and Sanitation, among others. dox itself: our apparent inability to avert a lematic for governments. Also missing from e-mail: [email protected]

INFORMATION THEORY Life versus entropy Timo Hannay explores a study of life that takes up where Erwin Schrödinger left off.

iology, long the domain of qualitative particularly struck by the observation that theories and experimental subjects The Demon in the atoms, although profoundly unpredictable, that refuse to do the same thing twice, Machine: How can form highly ordered systems. Further- Bis now thoroughly data-driven. Propelled by Hidden Webs of more, those systems persist for long periods the twentieth-century revolutions in molec- Information Are and even replicate, thus seeming to evade Finally Solving the ular biology and computing, its emphasis has Mystery of Life the second law of thermodynamics, which shifted from observing and describing to PAUL DAVIES states that total entropy, or disorder, can sequencing and calculating. In the process, Allen Lane (2019) only increase. biology has increasingly become like This classic account serves as Davies’s physics — a development that has caught starting point. As a cosmologist, however, the attention of quite a few physicists. Schrödinger delivered a landmark series of his principal question arises from a con- One such boundary-transcending thinker public lectures at Trinity College Dublin. sideration not of the irreducibly small, is the cosmologist and writer Paul Davies. Published the following year as What Is Life?, but of the incomparably large. If life exists His latest book, The Demon in the Machine, it explained many principles of molecular elsewhere in the Universe, Davies wonders, presents a case that information is central genetics — a decade before the structure of how can we recognize it? Searches for signs not just to doing biology, but to understand- DNA was discovered (see P. Ball Nature 560, of liquid water, organic chemistry or certain ing life itself. He follows in esteemed foot- 548–550; 2018). atmospheric gases (such as oxygen, carbon steps. In 1943, the Austrian physicist Erwin As a quantum theorist, Schrödinger was dioxide or methane) make sense given the

COMMENT BOOKS & ARTS JOHN DURHAM/SPL

Chloroplasts inside moss cells. These organelles conduct photosynthesis, a process that relies on quantum effects. characteristics of the one ecosystem we way of Claude Shannon’s information theory, into the globe was finally counteracted by know, but to accept these as the essence Turing machines (universal computers), the launch of the first artificial satellites. of life seems to him (and me) desperately von Neumann machines (self-replicating Arguably, such situations are not merely con- narrow-minded. universal constructors), molecular biol- sistent with the presence of life, but almost Davies claims that life’s defining charac- ogy, epigenetics, information-integration impossible to explain in any other way. teristics are better understood in terms of theories of consciousness and quantum Moreover, a definition of life that depends information. This is not as absurd as it may biology (which concerns quantum effects on its informational characteristics rather seem. Energy is abstract, yet we have little in processes from photosynthesis to insect than its carbon-based substrate could force trouble accepting it as a causal factor. Indeed, coloration and bird navigation). a reappraisal of our attitudes towards artifi- energy and information are closely related Such disparate threads might seem like cial systems embodied in computers. We are through entropy. unpromising material from which to weave a already beginning to treat these as compan- Davies explains this connection by refer- coherent narrative. ions; might we eventually come to see them ring to Maxwell’s demon. Victorian physicist But Davies does “We are already as living creatures rather than mere imita- James Clerk Maxwell’s celebrated thought so admirably, with beginning to tions? With apologies to Charles Darwin, experiment features a hypothetical minia- only occasional treat computers there is grandeur in this view of life. ture beast perching at an aperture between forays into areas As well as having eclectic interests, Davies two containers of gas, where it allows only that feel slightly out as companions; is iconoclastic and opinionated. Although certain molecules to pass, depending on of place. One such might we certainly no believer in a vital force distinct their kinetic energy. The demon can thus is the brief account eventually from physics or chemistry, he has little time create a temperature gradient between the of his work on can- come to see for reductionism, believing that life cannot containers: a reduction in overall entropy, cer, which he sees them as living be fully explained in terms of lower-level apparently breaking the second law of less as an example creatures?” laws (such as the second law of thermo thermodynamics. The resolution to this of broken cellular dynamics), even in principle. In a final nod paradox seems to lie in the fact that the machinery and more as a regression to an to Schrödinger — who believed that a proper demon must gather information about the earlier evolutionary state, when single-celled understanding of life might reveal “other properties of each molecule, and for this it organisms responded to adverse conditions laws of physics hitherto unknown” — Davies requires a recording device, such as a brain by replicating. closes by arguing that biology might yet con- or a miniature notebook. When its storage What practical difference does it make to tain deep lessons for physics. This is highly space eventually runs out, the information see life as informational? We don’t yet know, speculative and, in my (biologist’s) view, must be deleted, a process that necessarily but can speculate. For one thing, if the essen- probably wrong. But this is not a criticism. produces an increase in total entropy. tial characteristics of life are entropic, extra- On the contrary, if only more of us were From this perspective, living systems terrestrial searches based on chemistry could wrong in such thought-provoking ways, we can be seen as composed of countless be misguided. It might be more useful to look might more readily uncover the truth. ■ such ‘demons’ (proteins and other cellular for phenomena such as ‘anti-accretion’ — in machinery) that maintain local order by which matter is regularly transferred from a Timo Hannay is founder of the education pumping disorder (often in the form of heat) planet’s surface into space. Earth has experi- data-analytics company SchoolDash, based into their surroundings. Davies adroitly enced this since the 1950s, when the one-way in London. brings Schrödinger’s account up to date by traffic in asteroids and meteorites plunging e-mail: [email protected]