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An Interview With Professor Eric Smith#10| Life Formation, Philosophy Of Science, Language Structure — Transcript

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0:00think about the expression living thing
0:03think about it as a linguist don't think
0:04about it as a scientist for now
0:08that sentence has a subject and a
0:10predicate
0:12the subject is the thing and the
0:15predicate is living
0:17but as a logician think about what a
0:19predicate is
0:22a construction of that form says the
0:24primary
0:25objects of our discourse are things
0:27anything we care about must start with
0:29things
0:31now i want to take the universe of all
0:33things
0:34and i want to group it into two sets the
0:36living ones and the not living ones
0:38and the predicate tells me which set i'm
0:40in
0:42so i will say in having chosen to frame
0:46the sentence that way
0:47people have committed what logicians
0:49call a category error
0:51because the starting point in the
0:54universe is not
0:55things and so if you start your sentence
0:58by committing to beginning with things
1:01you have already boxed yourself into a
1:03blind end that you can't escape from and
1:04there is no answer to that question
1:11[Music]
1:18erica smith received the bachelor of
1:21science in physics and mathematics from
1:23the
1:23california institute of technology in
1:271987
1:28and a phd in physics from the university
1:31of texas
1:33at austin in 1993 with a dissertation on
1:37problems in a string theory and high
1:39temperature superconductivity
1:42from 1993 to 2000
1:46he worked in physical non-linear and
1:48statistical acoustics
1:50at the applied research labs ut
1:54austin and the los alamos national
1:57laboratory
1:59from 2000 he has worked at the santa fe
2:02institute on problems of
2:04self-organization in thermal chemical
2:07and biological systems a focus on his
2:10current work
2:11is the statistical mechanics of the
2:13transition from the
2:15geochemistry of the early earth to the
2:17first levels of biological organization
2:20with some emphasis on the emergence of
2:23metabolic network
2:24he's also the co-author of the origin
2:27and nature of life on earth the
2:29emergence of the fourth
2:31geosphere so you seem to have a very
2:35interesting resume uh
2:38so how you first
2:41started physics then you moved into
2:43studying the origins of life so
2:46how did you decide to make that
2:48transition
2:50yeah i would not have had the sense to
2:52make that decision other people made it
2:54for me
2:56um so when you don't get a job you try
2:58to find a way to survive
3:01and when it was clear i was not going to
3:04continue
3:05in high energy physics i had a period of
3:08scrambling of just trying to find any
3:10kind of work i could do
3:12and so i started a line of research
3:15myself
3:15in the house and just started publishing
3:17from the house
3:19and tried to find it
3:22a profession where i could keep some
3:24contact with science and still go to
3:26meetings and still learn
3:27things even if it was not connected to
3:30what i
3:31was interested in research-wise and
3:34the place where i could find that was in
3:36acoustic research for the navy and some
3:38oceanography work and material science
3:40and things like that
3:42so i just did a kind of a hodgepodge of
3:43jobs whatever i could find
3:46and of course science is science the
3:48same math shows up over and over again
3:50in all kinds of areas and so
3:52if you're looking for interesting
3:53problems you'll find them
3:55wherever you're working and for me the
3:58interesting problems
3:59turned out to be in areas of
4:02self-organizing processes that make
4:04engines
4:05and this is why there are no no wise
4:09young people
4:10in biochemistry because you have to
4:13memorize things
4:14for 70 years before you realize that the
4:17way it's organized is all quite simple
4:20and young people who have not been doing
4:22that for 70 years don't have that
4:23experience
4:25and i thought okay i'm never going to
4:26get anywhere on this because it's just
4:28it's a million facts and a million
4:30details and there's no big picture
4:32and it was there's more
4:36in that story but it's not interesting
4:37to tell
4:39when i went to the santa fe institute
4:42this is the importance
4:43of knowing people because you don't know
4:45what to look for
4:47but if you have a community and if they
4:49know you and they know
4:50others they will know who you should
4:52meet even if you don't know it
4:55and some people there said you need to
4:58meet harold morowitz because when you
5:00two talk you say completely different
5:02things but you sound exactly the same
5:05and so i met harold and harold said
5:08here's all this set of things in
5:11biochemistry that i'm sure
5:12are universal i'm sure they have a law
5:14like explanation
5:16but i don't have a mathematical way of
5:18approaching that question
5:20and i said i have this mathematics that
5:23i'm sure explains something but i don't
5:25know what to look for because all i get
5:26is human physiology and medicine
5:29and of course if you want to look at
5:30biochemistry
5:32starting with human physiology and
5:34medicine is like having this beautiful
5:36new telescope and saying well here's the
5:38big end i'll look in through the big end
5:40and you say i don't understand
5:41everything looks so far away
5:43well with the telescope you're supposed
5:45to start looking through the small end
5:47and if you look through the big end it
5:48doesn't do what it's supposed to do
5:50microbiology is the same way if you want
5:53to understand biochemistry
5:55you start with microbiology and the deep
5:57evolution of bacteria
5:58and then you can see the sense of the
6:00field unfolding
6:02and it's only late late lately and
6:04complicated when you get to human
6:06physiology and medicine
6:08so that the awareness of that
6:12and all of the things that harold had
6:14learned from 50 years
6:15he was an old man by the time i met him
6:17so he had time to become wise
6:21all of the accumulation of that
6:22knowledge that harold had gathered
6:25allowed us to pick out the things in
6:27biochemistry that should have law like
6:29explanations
6:31and then for me coming with mathematics
6:34and physics ideas
6:35i had things that i could start with
6:37that were not infinitely complicated
6:39they were fairly simple
6:40a few molecules a few pathways and that
6:43was enough to get us started working
6:45and that was the beginning of a 25-year
6:48collaboration i guess
6:49or close to it that led to the book that
6:52you guys found
6:53so it's very very circuitous
6:56so yeah just for our audience uh harold
6:59is your co-author
7:01and so you worked 25 years to write
7:04to write the book or close to it maybe
7:08maybe not 25 maybe
7:0917 something like that but long time
7:12yeah
7:13wow that so that's another thing i
7:14believe in i think that if you want to
7:17do
7:17interdisciplinary work you need to pick
7:21good collaborators you need to think of
7:23yourself as becoming their student
7:25and they will think of themselves as
7:27becoming your student
7:28and then you need to stay with them for
7:30a long time because it takes a long time
7:32to learn to think in new ways
7:34so you have to have patience and you
7:36have to trust each other
7:38and what were what were some of the
7:42the breakthroughs that came out of your
7:45collaboration
7:48well i'm not sure we ever had any
7:49breakthroughs
7:51but we were able to say some things that
7:53were kind of sensible
7:56which is good enough for me yeah
8:00the idea that
8:04harold had an idea for a long time since
8:06long before he met me and i don't think
8:08he came up with that i think gunther
8:09vector slicer in germany
8:11was one of the first people to see it
8:13and maybe even earlier than him
8:16but the citric acid cycle is certainly
8:20the organizing center
8:22of all biochemistry in all living things
8:25on earth
8:27if you try to do phylogenetic
8:30reconstructions sort of the deep history
8:32of ancient bacteria
8:34it's not easy to construct the citric
8:37acid cycle as a carbon fixation cycle
8:40all the way back to the beginning there
8:41are other pathways that look like
8:43they're easier to take all the way back
8:44to the beginning
8:46but those other pathways are not the
8:48organizing center of all of biochemistry
8:50and the citric acid cycle
8:52is and so
8:55if you're a physicist and you see that
8:59even when there's all this complexity
9:01and historical revision that living
9:02systems do
9:04but they always attach back to the same
9:06point
9:08your impulse is to think that that point
9:11has informational
9:12importance it's a kind of a an anchoring
9:15point
9:16that other things attach themselves back
9:18to and that requires an explanation
9:21if you work mostly in a historical field
9:24like
9:24phylogenetics you are
9:28you don't feel like you have to ask for
9:30a causal explanation because you can
9:32just say well it got fixed historically
9:34and then once it was locked in other
9:36things attract to it
9:38but you're not necessarily looking for
9:39cause
9:41if you're a physicist and you find an
9:43object
9:44you feel like you have an obligation to
9:46explain why that
9:47object came into existence
9:51and history may tell you part of the
9:54reason it played roles afterward
9:56but history may not be a complete
10:00account for why it existed in the first
10:02place
10:03and there were many people in santa fe
10:05you know my colleague walter fontana who
10:07brought me to
10:08santa fe who very strongly influenced my
10:11thinking in these ways
10:14you know um walter has a beautiful
10:16series of papers from long ago
10:20with leo bus with titles like the
10:23arrival of the fittest
10:25and he's saying you know darwin can
10:27explain to you why some things survive
10:29over other things once they exist
10:32but that doesn't address the separate
10:34question of how you come
10:36into existence when nothing of that kind
10:38had ever existed before
10:40and that's a problem that lives in
10:42another domain within science
10:44that also has to be solved so how do we
10:47go after that problem
10:51maybe there is a law of coming to
10:54existence
10:56or many yes oh okay so yeah oh yeah we
11:00know for a fact
11:01that so earth is about four and a half
11:04billion years old
11:06and apparently life has been around
11:10what or is consistent with our models of
11:12being around for
11:13around four billion years and they are
11:16the first half a billion
11:17it wasn't really possible chemically for
11:20life to form
11:22so as soon as it was possible for life
11:25to form it formed
11:27it's a reasonable guess yes is it
11:31are there other models there's a ton of
11:34uncertainty
11:35right um people are pretty confident
11:39that you have fully formed cellular life
11:41at 3.5 billion
11:44there are people who are willing to
11:45speculate you could go back to 4.1
11:48maybe um but
11:52that's 600 million years in which it's
11:55really hard to say that things are
11:58confident or can be even precisely
12:01described
12:023.8 still most people are reasonably
12:05confident
12:06they would be surprised if there were no
12:08life that early
12:09but that's the strongest statement a
12:11reasonable person will make is i would
12:12be surprised
12:14but it's not like it's not something
12:17like engineering trains
12:19where you really know what you're
12:20talking about with certainty it's a lot
12:22looser than that right yeah
12:25but it's still it was okay
12:29that would change things so are are you
12:32off
12:32the are you on the side of it being
12:37[Music]
12:38laws of nature that that force it to com
12:43that want life to come into existence or
12:46do you think
12:46it could have been a jackpot
12:50right you can't rule out the jackpot
12:54but i think in a science of historical
12:57phenomena
12:58ruling out the jackpot is not the
13:00correct goal
13:02um
13:05instead you say that there's a common
13:09there are many common signatures of
13:11things in nature that work in kind of
13:13the same way
13:16so it's not only how something comes
13:19into existence but how it behaves after
13:22it exists
13:23is it roughly stable does it tend to
13:26stand up if you poke at it or does it
13:28fall apart
13:30and the things that are unlikely to
13:31happen
13:33often are also fragile that's not true
13:36all the time
13:37um but you look for the signatures
13:40around something
13:42that suggests whether its origin is more
13:45lawful or more accident driven
13:48um and you try to make a preponderance
13:50of evidence argument
13:52i certainly
13:56it's so hard i apologize that my
13:58sentences are so long but it's so hard
14:00to speak carefully and say what you mean
14:03um if you ask me whether five fingers on
14:07the vertebrate hand
14:10are probably lawful
14:13i'm gonna guess no and i also know that
14:16it's not
14:17true because we have fish that have lots
14:20of vertebrate
14:21very verbal variability and
14:24we know how digits form and we know that
14:26it's a reaction diffusion pattern that
14:28lays down bone
14:30and so yeah so we have lots of ways of
14:32knowing that fingers on the hand
14:34are accidental if you ask me about the
14:38amino acids
14:40now we're starting to get into more
14:41complicated territory for some of the
14:44simpler ones like 12 or 13 of the
14:46simpler ones
14:48they are completely anchored around the
14:51citric acid cycle
14:53so while i don't know how accidental or
14:56how certain
14:57either one of them is i don't think we
15:00have two questions of
15:01accident i think we have one question
15:04and however certain one of them is the
15:06other one is almost
15:07exactly as certain but then you get to
15:10the other six or seven
15:12or eight depending on how you want to
15:14divide amino acids that are more
15:15complicated
15:17maybe there are some aspects of them
15:19that look more like the digits on the
15:21vertebrate hand
15:23in the sense that they have elements of
15:25things that couldn't really have been
15:27much different
15:27and elements of things that could have
15:29been
15:31but when you're faced with a situation
15:35like that
15:36you get up to a point where you know you
15:38can't make stronger statements with the
15:40things you know
15:42so then you go back to analyzing the way
15:44you argue
15:45and you say what is the weakest point in
15:47my argument what is the area where i get
15:50most
15:50stuck and where do i need to start
15:53looking for new evidence
15:56to find a better way of arguing in the
15:58place where my arguments are weakest
16:01and so for me that has meant you do the
16:04best you can you try to write a long
16:05book so that the arguments don't get
16:07lost
16:08and then you go back to the beginning
16:09and start over and you try to educate
16:11yourself in a new area
16:13and for us the new area was
16:15combinatorics of chemistry
16:18because the chemical possibility space
16:19is so large
16:22that if i look at metabolism i can tell
16:24you all the ways metabolism is special
16:28you know simple chemicals functional
16:30groups that are relatively easy to form
16:32with simple chemistry
16:34and when they're formed they create
16:36environments where similar reactions can
16:38act again
16:39so you don't need a lot of innovation to
16:42use that chemistry to build things up
16:44now there are important gaps questions
16:46nobody has a way to answer
16:49but i can tell you about how those
16:50things are special
16:52someone who doesn't think that means
16:54they're unique
16:55can say well chemistry is so big we're
16:58sure that similarly special things would
17:00be found in many other areas
17:03and i say how sure are you how big is
17:05chemistry
17:06and they say chemistry is very very big
17:09and i realize that we're not talking
17:11science anymore we're watching monty
17:12python
17:14right so clearly what both of us have to
17:17do
17:18is build tools to find out just how big
17:20chemistry is
17:23and it's right that chemistry is very
17:25very big
17:27and most questions you ask about it you
17:29don't
17:30really even have ways to systematically
17:32navigate the space
17:33they know and then they pick a point
17:36somewhere in the space and try to solve
17:38a problem
17:39and they do however well they can do and
17:41then somebody else who knows something
17:43else different will pick a point
17:44somewhere else in the space and try to
17:46solve a problem
17:48it's great it's much better than nothing
17:50and it's how we gain knowledge
17:52but if all you're doing is picking
17:54points here and there in the space
17:56you're limited by human intuition and
17:58experience
18:00and if different people have experience
18:02from different domains that doesn't
18:03really have a good overlap
18:06then you get these kind of unsatisfying
18:08conversations that origin of life has
18:10had for so many decades
18:12where person a believes hypothesis one
18:15person b believes hypothesis two
18:18and they have no way to address each
18:20other because they emphasize completely
18:21different things
18:22and there's no way for either one to
18:25productively engage with the reasons the
18:28other person
18:28believes something different and so at
18:31that point that's when you go back and
18:33you analyze the argument and you say
18:35we need better ways to navigate chemical
18:38space
18:39so that we can find out how big it is
18:41what is the null hypothesis
18:44how hard is the search for us doing
18:46science
18:47how hard was the search for nature
18:50having random processes
18:53waiting to stumble upon something that
18:55maybe has order
18:57and so we then go back to building tools
18:59and that's kind of where
19:00where a lot of us are these days i told
19:02you we had a
19:05student doing a presentation earlier
19:07this morning
19:08what she's working on is trying to
19:11estimate how big the chemical space is
19:13and how many
19:14kinds of molecules might have the kinds
19:17of special properties that biomolecules
19:19have
19:20and this is an area where 20 years ago
19:22the computational tools were not good
19:23enough
19:24to be of a lot of help so chemists
19:26largely were sort of scornful of them
19:28they thought well
19:30these are not helping us do what we know
19:31how to do well but the chemical tools
19:34have become a lot better
19:36and the chemists have gotten up to the
19:37edge of what they can do well
19:39with their own intuitive methods so that
19:42that handshake that collaboration is
19:44starting to become more productive now
19:46rapidly and so i think there's good work
19:48we can do in
19:49in those areas
19:53it would be interesting to to find out
19:56how
19:56big of a domain we're talking about
19:59because it it seems like based on what
20:02you're saying
20:03that we don't even know the magnitude of
20:06the problem
20:07of that's right right um
20:12so you i've and i also had you you said
20:14people say
20:15chemistry is big but
20:18you're you're a skeptical of the idea
20:22um no no no they're entirely right
20:25right okay the problem is that unless
20:28you can start to attach numbers to how
20:30big things are
20:32and unless you start to have the ability
20:34to navigate
20:35you're not in the domain of modern
20:36systematic science anymore
20:38you're back in the domain of natural
20:40philosophy and just exploring and hoping
20:42you stumble on something
20:46but you realize that you can't build
20:47bridges by hoping you stumble on things
20:50you you start your science always with
20:53natural philosophy and discovery
20:55but you have to move out of that phase
20:58into a phase
20:59where you say if i'm stuck and if we
21:02disagree
21:03we have to find a way to backtrack to
21:05the last thing we agreed on
21:07and figure out what's missing and how to
21:10find it
21:11with better than random chance and those
21:14are the methods that we now have to
21:16build up
21:18right it's more of a logical problem as
21:20opposed to
21:21this statement you you have to define
21:24big
21:24before starting to do any any research
21:28further right and and i
21:31i had used to talk about citric acid
21:34cycles could
21:34could you tell us what they are what we
21:37mean by citric
21:38acid cycles with regards to living
21:41things
21:42you bet so like everything else this was
21:45discovered backward
21:47um and it's not surprising right we live
21:49in the human world we see things that
21:51are big enough for us to see
21:53so we begin our discovery of everything
21:55from the human perspective but of course
21:59of course from the standpoint of life on
22:01earth the ecosystems where
22:02they become possible are highly
22:05interdependent and highly complex
22:08so anything that you see in the human
22:09world is going to be overwhelmingly
22:12colored by all the accidents of history
22:14that made that possible
22:16so the citric acid cycle was discovered
22:18in humans
22:20it is a cycle with 11 small molecules
22:24they had between two carbons and six
22:25carbons
22:28depending on how you count some people
22:30will count more you know 12 or 13
22:32if they look at the activated versions
22:34of some of the molecules
22:36um i'm counting 11 because i'm counting
22:39the carbon backbones
22:41you have 11 reactions that convert to
22:43carbon backbones
22:46it was discovered by hans krebs i think
22:48in 1935 or 37
22:50i forget the year
22:54and it was discovered to be the pathway
22:56that we use
22:57to break down either sugars or fats
23:02in the process of respiration we break
23:05them down into carbon dioxide that we
23:07exhale
23:09and then we use the energy from that
23:10breakdown to drive all the rest of our
23:12metabolism
23:13so without the citric acid cycle we have
23:15no metabolism we have no respiration we
23:17have no life
23:20it turns out it was not krebs first
23:23interest at the time because
23:25you have to realize how limited the
23:28tools of biochemistry are when he was
23:30working
23:31it was an astonishing accomplishment to
23:34figure out what this cycle was and how
23:36it worked
23:37with the tools available at the time but
23:39as we look from a modern perspective at
23:41the citric acid cycle
23:43you also realize that every chemical
23:46that is built not only by us
23:48but by any organism has a starting
23:51compound
23:52in the citric acid cycle so you look at
23:55the whole biosphere all these tens of
23:57thousands or
23:57hundreds of thousands of different
23:59compounds that are built
24:00organic compounds all of them start from
24:03one of four or five precursors
24:05in the same cycle which is astonishing
24:08right so it would it's more astonishing
24:11than the fact
24:12that every composition in literature is
24:16made out of the same letters
24:18because if your literature is english
24:20you have 26 letters
24:21and you have maybe 40 or 100 000 words
24:24that's a lot
24:26but it would be as if much more than
24:29everything in literature
24:31were made from only four letters or five
24:34letters
24:35and all of the words were built up from
24:37only that that's what bio
24:39that's how biochemistry is organized but
24:42if you look at the citric acid cycle as
24:44it was discovered
24:46in view of that biochemical organization
24:49it seems strange and it's hard to make
24:51sense of because as a respiratory
24:53process
24:54it takes in complicated molecules that
24:57are already complicated sugars or fats
25:00it breaks them down to carbon dioxide
25:02which is not organic and it's not
25:03complicated
25:05but then it uses the intermediates in
25:06the breakdown to build up everything
25:08else
25:10vitamins and amino acids and nucleotides
25:13and all that stuff
25:16so what will it be is it breaking down
25:18or is it building up
25:19well in us it's doing both and that's
25:21hard to understand
25:24so the discovery that was made much
25:26later in 1966
25:28by robert arnon and then um
25:34oh buchanan i forget the names
25:38it's the buchanan arnon paper you would
25:42think i would know these things but i've
25:43been doing math since january
25:45and my mind is in math world and i'm
25:47forgetting my my history and my facts
25:49we love our maths here don't worry yes
25:53um they discovered they were trying
25:56to understand how a species of bacterium
25:59was fixing carbon
26:01how it was taking in carbon dioxide and
26:04using it to make more complicated
26:06organic molecules
26:08and it's a photosynthetic organism but
26:09it was not using the calvin cycle
26:11which was how everyone believed
26:13photosynthesis worked
26:15and buchanan and arnon and a third guy
26:19whose name
26:20i feel bad because he was important too
26:21and i should remember his name
26:23well think of it evans
26:28what evans buchanan and were eventually
26:30able to work out
26:32is that this bacterium i think it was
26:34chloroflexus or antiquities
26:37was using the same molecules as the
26:39citric acid cycle
26:40and more or less the same reactions and
26:43it was running them in the opposite
26:44direction that we run it in
26:47so we take in sugar or fat
26:50we respire carbon dioxide and we use
26:53oxygen
26:54to break down those organics to co2
26:57which is where the oxygen and co2 is
26:58coming from
27:00to get energy they were taking energy
27:03from someplace else from photosynthesis
27:06they were taking in co2 instead of
27:08breathing it out
27:10and they were building up all of the
27:13molecules
27:14such as sugars and fats by running the
27:17reactions in the opposite direction but
27:20as soon as you look at that
27:22you say oh this one makes sense
27:25in humans it didn't make sense but in
27:27these bacteria it makes sense
27:29because it's all building they start
27:32from co2 they make two carbon compounds
27:35and three and four and five and six
27:36carbon compounds
27:38and they grow the carbon it's like fly
27:40paper the carbon is sticky and the co2
27:42attaches to it
27:44and out of that they make sugars and
27:46fats
27:47and they also make everything else they
27:49make all the vitamins they make all
27:50the amino acids they make all the
27:52nucleic acids
27:54and anything else more complicated made
27:56from those
27:57and so you say aha this is the thing
28:01that made sense and krebs himself i
28:03think in 1981
28:05was looking at the buchanan arnhem it's
28:08called the reductive citric acid cycle
28:10because it's
28:10it's consuming electrons we can come
28:12back to why it's called that if you want
28:15krebs looked at it and said this is the
28:17version that was on earth before the
28:19version i discovered
28:22my version happened after the original
28:24version
28:25which was a building up version
28:28got reversed and turned into a breaking
28:31down version
28:32to be a core of energy metabolism but
28:35that happened
28:35after there was oxygen on earth and
28:38after there was a way of reusing these
28:40compounds
28:42and now it is i would say universally
28:46believed that that's the correct
28:48understanding i'm sure you can find
28:49in fact i even know one you can find a
28:51scientist here there
28:53who wants to put krebs version of the
28:55cycle very very early on earth but in
28:58terms of what
28:59really reconstructs as the history of
29:01bacteria
29:02the deep history is that its
29:05role as a carbon fixation was early
29:08and then much later when it became
29:12useful to live in complicated ecosystems
29:14and break carbon molecules down
29:17and when you had sources of oxidants
29:20then it became productive to start doing
29:23more complicated stuff with the cycle
29:25running different parts of the pathway
29:27independently reversing the pathway that
29:29kind of thing
29:31so at least now the core structure of
29:34metabolism makes sense
29:36when viewed from a microbiology and a
29:38historical point of view
29:41and so what harold and i did together
29:43working for many years
29:46was to just try to get the common sense
29:48version of this
29:49picture worked out and to to hook it
29:52into the rest of metabolism and i should
29:54mention
29:55a wonderful junior colleague i had in
29:58the last several years of that work will
30:00hear brockman
30:01who's currently at mit rohir worked with
30:05me
30:06to understand when i had worked with
30:09harold we had mostly been
30:10concerned with the citric acid cycle and
30:12a few molecules around it the simple
30:14amino acids
30:15rohir worked with me and mo the primary
30:18work was really his all of the deep
30:20insights were his discoveries and the
30:22invention
30:22and most of the work was done by him to
30:25fill out how this became
30:28the core of all the rest of the
30:29innovations in carbon fixation
30:31and sort of the rest of core
30:33biochemistry
30:35so that was what we did for that period
30:37before i had to go back and sort of
30:39start to learn about chemistry as a null
30:41model with a new set of collaborators
30:43and a new set of projects
30:47um how do you define
30:50a living thing um
30:54because i know i've had many different
30:57definitions
30:59in fact um we i interviewed
31:03andrew noel two episodes ago and he told
31:06me oh i don't know
31:07what how to define it but i know it when
31:09i see it so
31:11could you tell could you tell us what
31:14your definition
31:16how you define how do you approach the
31:18problem
31:20your choice of words is just wonderful
31:22um
31:24because you started asking how i define
31:26a living thing
31:27and i was going to answer i don't
31:31but you already recognized in some sense
31:34you have an intuition for where the core
31:35of the problem is because then you
31:37changed your question you asked how do
31:38you approach the problem
31:40and the first question of defining the
31:42living thing is not a proper question
31:44the second question of approaching the
31:46problem is exactly the right question
31:49so now i'll give you a harangue you
31:50didn't ask for but it's one of my
31:52favorites
31:54great think about the expression living
31:57thing think about it as a linguist don't
31:59think about it as a scientist for now
32:02that sentence has a subject and a
32:05predicate
32:07the subject is the thing and the
32:09predicate is living
32:12but as a logician think about what a
32:14predicate is
32:17a construction of that form says the
32:19primary
32:20objects of our discourse are things
32:22anything we care about must start with
32:24things
32:26now i want to take the universe of all
32:27things
32:29and i want to group it into two sets the
32:31living ones and the not living ones
32:33and the predicate tells me which set i'm
32:35in
32:37so i will say in having chosen to frame
32:41the sentence that way
32:42people have committed what logicians
32:43call a category error
32:46because the starting point in the
32:49universe is not things
32:52and so if you start your sentence by
32:53committing to beginning with things
32:56you have already boxed yourself into a
32:58blind end that you can't escape from and
32:59there is no answer to that question
33:02because it treats living as a predicate
33:06of
33:06things as if things
33:10carried the property of life or not life
33:12within them
33:14and i know why we make this category
33:17error but it's a metaphor error
33:20so i you're interdisciplinary so i know
33:22i can lead you off on these tangents and
33:24you won't get bored instantly
33:26scientists tend to get bored instantly
33:27but younger people are better
33:29so we started in a sort of
33:33pre-aristotelian time
33:35we know about living in dead right these
33:38are the fish in the sea that are living
33:39these are the fish on the shore that are
33:41dead
33:42and if you're starting with fish it's
33:43perfectly fine to partition them into
33:45the live ones and the dead ones
33:48but that's living and dead in regard to
33:50the life cycle
33:52let's come into the aristotelian
33:54categorization
33:55and now we're not talking about living
33:57and dead within a life cycle
33:59we're talking about being part of the
34:01biosphere or being part of something
34:03that somehow is not the same as the
34:04biosphere
34:06that's not the same metaphorically
34:09it kind of resembles the living and dead
34:12but you know that a rock is not the same
34:14kind of a thing as a dead fish
34:17because a rock was never alive in the
34:19sense that the fish was once alive
34:23but if we take our living dead predicate
34:25for fish
34:26and we try to apply it to biosphere
34:28non-biosphere
34:30we're doing that by metaphor we're not
34:32doing it by science and we're not doing
34:33it by a careful understanding of what we
34:35need
34:37so i want to say that is the source
34:40of all the wrong turns that happened
34:42since is using that metaphor where it
34:44should not be used
34:46and starting with life as a predicate
34:50when life is not a predicate that's not
34:53that's not a survivable way to try
34:55to use the term so now let me replace
34:58having told you i think that's an error
35:01we never understand
35:02errors until we see something that we
35:03say is not an error
35:05and we can look back and say oh that's
35:06why the other thing was an error
35:08right like we didn't know there was a
35:10problem with newtonian gravity until we
35:11had einstein gravity to replace it
35:14we didn't know that classical mechanics
35:15was a problem until we had quantum
35:17mechanics to replace it
35:19so if i want to say that treating life
35:21as a predicate is a problem
35:23i have to tell you what i'm going to
35:24replace it by
35:26that is not a problem and that allows us
35:28to look back on it
35:31and i will say that the right answer is
35:35coming from
35:37the concept of phase transitions as we
35:40have spent the last hundred years
35:41discovering it in modern physics
35:45so if i give you one water molecule
35:49and i say oh is that a liquid water
35:51molecule or is that a vapor water
35:52molecule
35:54of course that can't be answered because
35:56the water molecule is a thing
35:59but the property of being a liquid or a
36:01vapor is not carried by that molecule
36:03it's not a predicate
36:04that you can use to sort the water
36:06molecules into the ones that are liquid
36:08and the ones that are vapor
36:10because being a liquid or a vapor is a
36:12property of relations
36:14not only of a finite number of water
36:17molecules to each other
36:18but of an indefinitely large collection
36:21of water molecules that work together
36:23to maintain the structure of relations
36:27so liquid is a phase vapor is a phase
36:31and i had someone remind me just earlier
36:33this week
36:34that when the greeks were looking for an
36:36atomic theory of
36:38nature they didn't get the atoms right
36:41but they realized the phases and they
36:44got those right
36:45so think of what earth water air and
36:47fire are
36:49they are the solid the liquid the vapor
36:52and the plasma phases
36:55wow pretty impressive
36:58but also a lesson for all of us that
37:02it took us thousands of years to go
37:04through all of our physics of objects
37:07go through phase transitions the
37:09discovery of thermodynamics the
37:10discovery of quantum field theory
37:12the renormalization group and the modern
37:15theory of matter
37:17and at the end of all of that we now
37:20have a theory where we realize it's
37:22actually all distributions and phases
37:25everything we thought was an object we
37:26now explain in terms of distributions
37:29in the modern quantum field theory of
37:32matter and phase transitions and
37:34renormalization group sorry for all this
37:36technical jargon but all
37:37i love it i love it i will reward you at
37:40the end
37:43we find out that the most reliable
37:46things in our ontology
37:48are the same kinds of things that were
37:50most recognizable to the greeks so long
37:53ago
37:54though we know about many more of them
37:56now they are the phases they are the
37:58stable structures of relations
38:01so now let me come back to the question
38:03about life on planets
38:07we think we can reliably imagine planets
38:10without life
38:12certainly if you get hot enough and
38:13molten enough you don't have organized
38:15organic chemistry we're sure we're safe
38:16there
38:17so deep in the hadean earth must have
38:19been that way for a while
38:21we can look at venus we can look at mars
38:23they probably are planets without life
38:25now venus really good bet mercury even
38:28better bet
38:29mars less certain but still probable i
38:32would say
38:33and then we can look at the earth and
38:35clearly the earth has a biosphere
38:38so now i can say what is the major
38:41difference between a planet without a
38:42biosphere and a planet with a biosphere
38:45what is the robust thing that no matter
38:48what happens
38:49never changes so think of all the things
38:52on earth that have changed
38:54you know maybe once there was only rna
38:57now there's rna and dna maybe once there
39:01were only bacterial and archaeal cells
39:03now there are eukaryotic cells
39:05once there were only unicellular
39:07organisms now they're multicellular
39:08organisms
39:10ecosystems grow everything gets turned
39:12over there's this constant darwinian
39:14churning
39:15and then there are innovations that get
39:16made once there was no oxygen on the
39:18surface now there's major oxygen on the
39:20surface that changes everything
39:24in all of that in planets without life
39:28your organic chemistry always lives over
39:30in one corner of the chemical space
39:34where it's dominated by things that are
39:35relatively near equilibrium
39:37or whose complexity is of a limited form
39:40and it tends to be dominated by things
39:42that are messy
39:43meaning that if you have a molecule of a
39:45certain size or certain structure
39:47you probably have lots of other
39:49molecules that are of similar size or
39:50structure to it
39:53if i compare that to a planet with a
39:55biosphere
39:57planet with a biosphere has huge
39:59concentrations
40:00gigatons of carbon in only a very small
40:04number of molecular species
40:06and the ways those molecular species are
40:08made are even smaller they're all built
40:11up from these four
40:12tiny intermediates so there's extreme
40:15complexity in that
40:17in that you have large molecules
40:19structured molecules and high
40:20concentrations
40:23extreme concentrations of exact
40:25molecular species
40:27and very low concentrations of things
40:29that are fairly close neighbors of them
40:31and you would think are similar and if
40:33instead of just looking at the molecules
40:35you look at the pathways by which
40:37they're made
40:38the selectivity is even more extreme
40:41than it is for the substance
40:43that property of a planet with a
40:45biosphere has never changed
40:47even as everything else about cellular
40:49organization
40:51and so if i look at that i say as a
40:54physicist
40:56that looks to me like a phase change
40:59because there was a structure of
41:00relations in planets without life
41:03and there's a new structure of relations
41:05and planets with life
41:07it's not maintained by any one molecule
41:10or any one cellular form or whatever
41:12it's maintained by the whole thing
41:13together
41:15and it's very robust very
41:17self-maintaining
41:19and interestingly enough the identities
41:22and the roles of these molecules
41:24they're not attached in a reliable way
41:26to species different species will be
41:27handling different parts of this traffic
41:30but at the ecosystem level they're very
41:32regular they're very reliable
41:34this is what the early papers that
41:35harold and i were publishing on
41:37tried to emphasize though many other
41:39people besides us also have seen it
41:41in the same forms so then let's come
41:45back
41:46and let's ask well wait wait we started
41:47talking about things you have to at
41:49least say something about
41:50things and i say well think of how much
41:53is going on in the biosphere
41:55you have all these molecules and their
41:57roles little ones you have
41:59macromolecules
42:00peptides and rnas and dnas and all that
42:04stuff
42:04you have cells and all the cellular
42:07compartments
42:08you have all the relations among members
42:10and ecosystems
42:12all of those things are contributing to
42:14the robustness of the biosphere
42:17in all of that what is a cell what is an
42:20individual
42:21it's one architectural motif
42:25so if i single out the organisms the
42:28right question is to say
42:30why are organisms such an important
42:32architectural motif
42:34for a living system so now i'm not
42:38saying
42:38the property of life is a property of
42:41the thing
42:42i'm saying the thing is a hugely
42:44important architecture
42:46in maintaining the living state at the
42:48level of the biosphere
42:51and then we ask questions why does
42:53individuality emerge
42:55how many kinds of individuality are
42:57there what is the nature of
42:58individuality
42:59and then you realize there's tons of
43:01stuff we know in biology
43:02right so i have cells and the cells have
43:06genomes and the genomes stay at home
43:09viruses are genomes that don't stay at
43:11home they come and live in somebody
43:12else's cell and then when they make a
43:14mess they leave
43:16so there are at least two forms of
43:17individuality there's the individuality
43:19of
43:20metabolism and bioenergetics in the cell
43:23and then there's the individuality of a
43:24genomic life cycle which may or may not
43:26be attached to itself
43:28and i can go on and on like this and
43:30then you realize there's lots of stuff
43:32going on
43:33in the architectures of individuality
43:37all of those are parts of the dynamic of
43:39the biosphere
43:40but they are not carrying the property
43:42of living or not living it's their
43:44participation
43:45in the biosphere that allows them to
43:48inherit
43:50this distinction between a planet with
43:52life and a planet without life
43:54so i would replace the living thing
43:56predicate
43:57with the biosphere as the carrier of the
43:59living state
44:01so far so good yep yeah this
44:04is the deepest conversation we've ever
44:07had on this podcast just for the record
44:10very very interesting though right so
44:13yeah you've essentially
44:15shown me that the very framing of the
44:17question
44:18has built in assumptions that are false
44:22that we're not looking at it from the
44:24right we've just seen
44:26i think the idea might come from the
44:28idea of a
44:29spirit something has a spirit something
44:31is either living or dead
44:33but it's actually part of the greatest
44:36system
44:37and it participates in right
44:40wow a fun fact about that yes please
44:44your intuitions are wonderful and the
44:46thing that's best about being a
44:47scientist
44:48is that of course intuitions can always
44:50be wrong but we know we should go
44:52looking for evidence
44:54and then we can find out whether the
44:55intuition was in fact right or was
44:57spurious
44:59so one of the areas where i had the
45:01complete joy of spending a lot of years
45:03working
45:04is the history of human languages and
45:05how they go back
45:07and of course if you look at languages
45:10across the indo-european family
45:12you immediately recognize that they're
45:13all these cognates of you know common
45:15words so the word two is the same
45:17everywhere in indo-european it's had
45:19hundreds of thousands of years of
45:21individual descent but it hasn't changed
45:23the word nephew is almost entirely
45:25preserved
45:27whereas the words for butterflies and
45:28the tales of animals change all the time
45:32but there's an interesting one where you
45:35could say
45:36well what is the indo-european root for
45:38the word for animal
45:40it seems like a decent question
45:43it turns out it's not a well-formed
45:45question
45:47and here's what we know about it let's
45:50take english because i think i can
45:51remember the facts without getting lost
45:53in english
45:54we have two words well we have two words
45:57for everything in english right
45:59because english is an you know western
46:02germanic language that then got all of
46:04latin laid on it through norman french
46:06so it has two copies of the vocabulary
46:09and if you want a completely wonderful
46:11discourse on this read
46:12jorge luis borges about shakespeare and
46:15about how shakespeare uses those two
46:17copies of the vocabulary
46:19to set up tension and release it but i
46:21won't go on that tangent right now
46:24but just think about our two copies of
46:26the vocabulary in english
46:28for the words for animal one of them is
46:30animal
46:31one of them is beast
46:35if you trace those back animal of course
46:37came from the latin
46:39and so it's the latin word for these
46:41things beast comes from the germanic
46:44and it's the substratum word
46:48maybe it becomes it may have come in
46:50from some other funny direction like
46:51irish i forget
46:53but eventually the the unraveling of the
46:56story is that if you work
46:57back in ancient indo-european
47:00in proto-indo-european as spoken by
47:02people at the time there was not a word
47:04for animal
47:06there were two different words one of
47:08which i believe
47:10is reconstructed as deuce which has to
47:13do with wildness and dangerousness
47:16and through various things that came
47:19down for the beasts the wild animals
47:22the other is anae which was breath
47:26or spirit or soul and the domesticated
47:29animals were on a they were not the
47:31dangerous ones they were the ones that
47:32wouldn't kill you and you could eat them
47:35and then the deuce were the wild ones
47:37that were dangerous
47:40and so in modern language we have chosen
47:42to make a separation between the
47:44two-legged animals and all the other
47:45animals
47:46and so we think there's a word for
47:48animals separate from human
47:50but if you reconstruct you find that the
47:52categories apparently were different
47:54and they were indeed the difference
47:56exactly the difference you proposed
47:58between things that you counted as
48:00having spirit or soul or being safe
48:02and the things that were wild or
48:04dangerous in
48:06the surrounding hostile world so i think
48:09there's
48:09good evidence for your intuition that
48:12this is how human minds tend to think of
48:14these things and parse them
48:17yeah i i was listening very carefully
48:19because i i'm persians
48:21i was waiting to see if if any of them
48:23register
48:25you'll find them because of course um
48:28indo-ironic is then
48:29one of the branches within a
48:31indo-european yeah i don't
48:33know enough persian or farsi
48:37vocabulary to immediately have good
48:39examples of springtime
48:41but there are dozens of these things
48:43brother mother i think they're
48:45they're pretty much the same like
48:47[Music]
48:49moon moon divers between
48:52english and parisian at least yeah
48:55probably moon in indic is
48:58chand it comes from the word for shine
49:01or a dewdrop
49:03oh so you have all these things like
49:05chandrasekhar
49:07um family names and things like that
49:12so that that may have been a word shift
49:14a lexical displacement
49:17and i've had the the word locks locks
49:21apparently
49:23like that has some indo-european roots
49:25as well
49:26it's an ancient route for salman right
49:30yes interesting very intimate maybe we
49:33can dedicate another episode to the
49:36indo-european okay
49:39um so
49:43you know when we talk about um biosphere
49:46isn't our problem so when you say you
49:49know
49:50when you talked about the properties of
49:52biosphere
49:53is in our problem that we only have a
49:56sample size of
49:57one biosphere
50:00people like to say that i don't favor
50:02that way of saying it so much
50:04right um when i gave you that awful
50:07long-winded diatribe about
50:09living things one of the reasons
50:12it's important to me to recognize it as
50:14a category error
50:16is that when we make the category error
50:18there's all this stuff that we
50:20know in science that we understand well
50:22that it doesn't occur to us to use
50:25whereas when we set the categories out
50:27in the right way
50:29i think we're more attentive to the fact
50:31that all this other scientific knowledge
50:33is actually informative about how to
50:34pose the question
50:36and i think the same way about this one
50:38sample not one sample thing
50:41yes in a sense our biosphere
50:44is all connected it's all connected by
50:46common descent as far as we can tell
50:49that was such a big discovery when it
50:52came out
50:53that it kind of swept everything else
50:55off the board
50:56and you know we still have all of this
50:58social conflict people trying to say you
51:00know common descent is not
51:02a gigantic problem to accept it's sort
51:05of overwhelmingly clear
51:07and then there are people who don't like
51:09it and are constantly in tribal fights
51:10against it and so forth
51:12that's the last war that's a war that
51:14should have ended 100 years ago
51:15or 150 years ago because it's not hard
51:20but the problem is when you're so
51:23focused on the common descent part
51:26you realize that some things may not
51:29happen
51:31they may be common descent
51:34but the reason they're there may not be
51:37that they're locked in
51:38and preserved it may have been that they
51:41were so much easier to do that nothing
51:43else ever was really in play
51:45so if i'm in an airplane and i fly over
51:47the desert
51:49i don't see trees scattered here and
51:51there throughout the dry land
51:53with tap roots 400 meters deep to reach
51:56the water
51:57instead i see that there are river ways
51:59and they're crowded with trees because
52:01the trees can get the water right up at
52:02the surface
52:04and then everywhere else where there's
52:05not river there are no trees
52:07so if you're going to be a tree you're
52:08going to be a tree where it's easy to be
52:10a tree
52:12and in the same sense if i look at the
52:14biosphere and biochemistry and i see
52:17everything concentrated in around a few
52:18molecules and a few reactions
52:21my impulse is to think okay what we see
52:23are the trees
52:25what we want to understand is what what
52:27are the rivers that we're not
52:28recognizing to look for
52:30the sort of paths of least resistance
52:32where it's easy to be a molecule
52:36so the evolutionary view of life looks
52:39at molecules and asks what are they good
52:40for doing
52:42as a chemist or a physical chemist or a
52:46statistical physicist
52:48if you look at the same molecules you
52:50have the impulse to ask what is the
52:52molecule good at being
52:54as opposed to what is it good for doing
52:57and of course a molecule carries both of
52:59those sides it's a coin that has both a
53:01front and a back
53:03in order to exist it's easier if it's
53:05something that it's good at being for
53:07carbon
53:08in order to be important it survives
53:12if it has evolutionary consequences that
53:14it's good for doing something
53:17if we ask what are the components of
53:20life good at
53:21being then the answer to that for life
53:24on earth may not be just one thing it
53:26may be many things
53:29and as we come to better understand the
53:31landscape of chemistry
53:32and we learn to apply some of our tools
53:34of statistical physics for thinking in
53:36that complicated landscape
53:38which is a much harder place to work
53:40than any place physics has ever worked
53:42before
53:44we may find that there's tons of
53:45information in the biosphere and it's
53:47not a sample size of one
53:48it's a sample size of many many many
53:52so i want us to be attentive to looking
53:54for all the other places in science
53:56where we know how to ask questions
53:58but we have not been asking those
54:00questions of the biosphere before now
54:02because we were framing the problem in a
54:04way that caused us to ignore them
54:07and for a hundred years in your opinion
54:11for the entire history of humanity oh
54:13wow
54:14the the evolutionary insight
54:19as a mathematical insight or a
54:21scientific insight it should not have
54:22been remarkable
54:24right because mathematically it's
54:25ordinary scientifically as ordinary
54:28the thing that that makes darwin's
54:31science
54:32superb is that he had the big mind
54:37of
54:41what an ecologist a physiologist a
54:43geologist
54:44all at the same time he kept all that
54:47complexity in mind and he was aware of
54:49the rich
54:50able to distill that there were paths of
54:52causation that you could see
54:54amid all of the complexity that makes
54:56them hard to see
54:58that's what you get from reading the
55:00original science
55:01the idea that you can start with prior
55:04variation and you can filter it to get
55:07things
55:07that are better fitted to their
55:09environment mathematically that could
55:11have been done
55:11400 years earlier the bernoulli brothers
55:13could have understood that
55:15because the gambler's ruin problem
55:16already has the seeds of all of that
55:18solution
55:18in it and that was bernoulli and fema
55:21and pascal and all those guys
55:23so that's not the interesting part of
55:25evolution
55:27there are a few simple things that we
55:28should have just solved and moved on
55:30from
55:31within the last 150 years but
55:34the thing about not knowing where to
55:37look for questions that's human
55:39and that goes back our entire history
55:41and it's just going to be a problem
55:43forever because it's how human minds
55:46work so the problem of discovery
55:49in areas where you don't understand is
55:51just a fundamental problem of how to use
55:53minds
55:53to do science
55:58and do you think so if you if you could
56:01go back in time and with without any of
56:04your
56:04knowledge but if you could propose
56:08the questions that we are able to
56:10propose now
56:13we would we would be in a much better
56:15off situation
56:17if we were thinking about better
56:20questions
56:23i'm not sure um
56:27i think they're somewhere in tolstoy's
56:29warrant piece
56:32where he says
56:35somebody is speaking on behalf of
56:37somebody i don't know if it's one of the
56:38characters or if it's the narrator or
56:40who but somebody
56:41because this is all 30 years ago for me
56:44but somebody says why don't we just
56:46write the cliffs notes to war and peace
56:48and tell
56:49you know who did what and then we'll
56:51have it done
56:52and tolstoy's point is that that's not
56:54where the reality of life is carried the
56:56reality of life is carried in all the
56:58actual stories of how things really
56:59happen
57:00and how people really are and so the
57:03summary of the plot
57:05is just a structuring device but the
57:07substance of the story
57:08is in the experiencing of all of these
57:11complicated
57:12realities i think it's the same in
57:15science
57:16i think if you were to go back to
57:18galileo's time
57:21and show him a jetliner you know none of
57:24his flying machines would have worked
57:27and if you had shown him this enormous
57:28lump that looks like a building and is
57:30actually a 747
57:32and said you know however many hundreds
57:35of years later
57:36this thing will take off and go up into
57:38the air
57:41galileo could have sort of distantly
57:44glimpsed that such things would be
57:48conceivable
57:50but there's no way he could have had the
57:51kind of operational understanding that a
57:53child
57:54can have today of all the different
57:56engineering components that make that
57:58real so i think you have to
58:03you have to go through the phenomenology
58:06all the nuts and bolts of discovering
58:08the details of how things work and it's
58:10only after you have that
58:12lived experience that you can look back
58:15and you can put eclipse notes over it
58:18which is what theory does
58:20and say this is an abstraction that
58:22allows you to navigate
58:24all of that complicated space without
58:26getting lost
58:28but the abstraction is not a substitute
58:30for all of the sort of
58:32content detail that the abstraction
58:35puts into nice orderly packages
58:41well um
58:44yeah this this is yeah again it's very
58:48philosophically deep so could you tell
58:52us about the
58:53the thesis of your book about
58:56the about the biosphere being the
59:00fourth geosphere what do you mean by
59:03that
59:04in some sense it's the it's the thing
59:06that we put up as the alternative to
59:08living things
59:10where you say
59:14i would never ask about a water molecule
59:16whether
59:17it is liquid or gas in the same sense i
59:21can't ask whether a water molecule on
59:23earth
59:24is carrying the essence of the solid
59:28earth or the oceans or the atmosphere or
59:30life
59:31because one water molecule can go
59:32through all of those things
59:35but if i wanted to understand the earth
59:37i would certainly want to understand
59:39that it has these major domains it has
59:41the bulky rocky domain that does certain
59:43things certain kinds of chemistry and it
59:45anchors the planet's geometry
59:47and then there's a little bit of water
59:49on the surface that's a different phase
59:50and has different chemistry
59:52and then there's the atmosphere which
59:54does yet other things it interacts with
59:56sunlight in different ways than the
59:57ocean or the rock does
59:59and then there's the biosphere that
1:00:01occupies this whole
1:00:02other area of biochemical process of
1:00:05organic chemical process
1:00:06that the other three don't and so you
1:00:09could say okay
1:00:10in terms of getting a crude look at the
1:00:12hole which is the way mary gelman likes
1:00:14to express these things
1:00:17you would first recognize that there are
1:00:19these major phases
1:00:21and that the details are organized in
1:00:23communities within the major phases
1:00:26and you could say okay how much of the
1:00:28information is being carried in the
1:00:29major phase
1:00:31just the fact that this is in the bulky
1:00:33rock or that it's in the ocean or
1:00:34in the atmosphere or in the biosphere
1:00:37and then you could say okay how much is
1:00:39left out the major phases are only
1:00:41carrying
1:00:42part of the information what do we need
1:00:43to understand next
1:00:45what's carried in the ecosystem what's
1:00:47carried in the individual
1:00:49and then you work your way down within
1:00:50the individual how much is carried in
1:00:52the fact that it's cellular and it has a
1:00:54genome
1:00:55how much of it is carried in the life
1:00:56cycle how much of it is carried in the
1:00:58ecological relations and what maintains
1:01:01them
1:01:02and so the thesis of the book is just
1:01:05i should argue that the book is not
1:01:08supposed to be mainly important for its
1:01:10thesis
1:01:12the book is supposed to be mainly
1:01:14important as a tool to allow people to
1:01:16work in this area
1:01:18because if you think the way i do about
1:01:20doing origin of life work you would
1:01:24believe that you can't do the best
1:01:26possible work
1:01:27or the most original work by working
1:01:30only in one domain
1:01:32because life didn't care about our
1:01:34academic domains it is whatever it is
1:01:36and it draws from all of these processes
1:01:39so if we want a science of life that is
1:01:41faithful to the nature of life
1:01:44we want to be attentive to where all of
1:01:46these other processes are part of the
1:01:48correct scientific description
1:01:50but then if someone points you to a
1:01:52library and says go learn
1:01:54how are you ever going to start you have
1:01:56hundreds and thousands of linear feet of
1:01:58papers
1:01:59most of it's wrong a lot of it's junk
1:02:02it'll take you forever
1:02:03how do you start so the point of the
1:02:05book was to try
1:02:06to reduce the cost of entry by saying we
1:02:10can tell you a story we can introduce
1:02:12you to the literature and we can do it
1:02:13consistently
1:02:15across several different domains
1:02:18geochemistry
1:02:19organic chemistry biochemistry
1:02:21physiology
1:02:22some bits about evolution statistical
1:02:24physics
1:02:25information theory control theory
1:02:28and we can show you that this is not
1:02:30incomprehensible and it doesn't
1:02:32it doesn't require longer than a
1:02:33lifetime to read and we can give you a
1:02:36starting point in that reading
1:02:38and that way if you want to work in this
1:02:40area you don't have to be old before you
1:02:42begin
1:02:42you can start while you're still young
1:02:43and get something done
1:02:46but then within it the the sub thesis
1:02:48was
1:02:50just that one that the nature of the
1:02:52living state is carried by the biosphere
1:02:54as a whole
1:02:55that there are good arguments to think
1:02:58of it as a kind of a dynamic phase
1:03:00transition
1:03:01and then we ask the question what
1:03:03architectures make that phase transition
1:03:05possible
1:03:07what is the importance of chemistry as a
1:03:09substrate
1:03:11what is the importance of
1:03:12cellularization or other things as an
1:03:13important architectural motif
1:03:15how can we break the question down in
1:03:17such a way that it's sensible and
1:03:18tractable
1:03:21um how how would you imagine
1:03:24if earth had a different ecology
1:03:27uh how do you imagine so
1:03:31how different do you think life could
1:03:33have formed on a fundamental level
1:03:37i would love to know how to ask that
1:03:39question and i don't
1:03:41all right so this is the issue of how
1:03:43big is chemistry
1:03:45um so we have all these the thing that's
1:03:48amazing about chemistry on earth is that
1:03:50it allows
1:03:51so many layers of complexity to be built
1:03:53one on top of another on top of another
1:03:56so the most fundamental question is how
1:03:58many domains within chemistry
1:04:00even support that kind of elaboration of
1:04:02complexity
1:04:05we have the earth it's the easiest place
1:04:07to do experiments we can do chemistry at
1:04:10will
1:04:11we don't we can't reproduce what somehow
1:04:13has happened on the earth
1:04:14so we're missing fundamental things even
1:04:16there even with the chemistry we can see
1:04:19even with the chemistry we can do
1:04:20experiments on we don't know what we
1:04:22haven't asked in the right way
1:04:25now to ask to answer the question that
1:04:27you posed
1:04:28which is what we have to do if we're
1:04:30going to do planetary exploration
1:04:32you say go to some planet or some moon
1:04:34whose chemistry is off somewhere else
1:04:36here
1:04:39is it capable of being interesting in
1:04:42the way biochemistry is
1:04:43interesting when we don't know how to
1:04:46answer that question even for the most
1:04:48accessible chemistry we have
1:04:49how do you do the counter factual that's
1:04:52where you have to have theory
1:04:54you have to get you have to learn what's
1:04:55in the chemical space and learn how to
1:04:57systematically explore it
1:04:59preferably guided by needing to get the
1:05:01correct answers for the chemistry we
1:05:03already have on earth which we still
1:05:05can't do
1:05:06so that's how hard that question is and
1:05:09i i have a
1:05:10question about theories i think you'd be
1:05:13i've had this for a while i think you'd
1:05:15be the right
1:05:16person to ask so you know in physics i
1:05:19feel
1:05:20when we say theory it's much more
1:05:23established hard
1:05:24fact than for example in other
1:05:27sciences when we say theory they're much
1:05:30more fragile
1:05:32um yes since you're good with words
1:05:36how am i do i have a point or am i just
1:05:40you entirely have a point yes um
1:05:44this is a challenge which is that the
1:05:47language of science
1:05:49always draws words from the common
1:05:51language
1:05:52but then it gives them very particular
1:05:54meanings within the scientific domain
1:05:56that they did not have in the common
1:05:57language
1:05:59and so in the common language most
1:06:02words don't have
1:06:05what i would call operational
1:06:07definitions
1:06:09you know if you take word like cat or
1:06:11dog or cow
1:06:12that's pretty concretely defined you
1:06:14know what yes or is not a cat israel is
1:06:16not a dog if you take a word like
1:06:19emergence or theory or belief
1:06:23those do not have similarly concrete
1:06:26definitions
1:06:28they often are sort of metaphors layered
1:06:29on top of metaphors
1:06:31the most you get is what the linguist
1:06:35vygotsky called family resemblances
1:06:38where words tend to kind of cluster
1:06:40together because in a way they seem to
1:06:43kind of refer to the same thing
1:06:46and so the word theory in the common
1:06:50language
1:06:52has this flavor of something ventured or
1:06:56tentative and
1:06:57uncertain and hypothetical
1:07:02within science that usage has mainly
1:07:05been taken over by the word hypothesis
1:07:09many sciences do not actually have
1:07:12anything
1:07:13that fills the role the theory fills in
1:07:17physics
1:07:20physics in some sense occupies the
1:07:23domain of the simplest problems people
1:07:25could find
1:07:26and therefore the problems that we have
1:07:27the strongest lock on
1:07:29they tend to be the problems that are
1:07:31the best reducible
1:07:33in the sense that there's a there's
1:07:35little enough complexity
1:07:36in them that you can break the parts
1:07:39apart you can understand the parts
1:07:41you can then understand the rules of
1:07:42assembly you can understand the new
1:07:45aspects of irreducible
1:07:47organization that come from the rules of
1:07:49assembly but you can know
1:07:51how the composites are constrained by
1:07:53the parts
1:07:54and so physics has largely consisted of
1:07:56the problems that submit well to being
1:07:58solved by that
1:07:59kind of method so they're simple in a
1:08:02certain important fundamental sense
1:08:04even if some things like gravitational
1:08:06waves
1:08:07are extraordinarily difficult
1:08:09technically or the higgs boson
1:08:11to get measurements on the principles
1:08:15behind
1:08:15them still live at a pencil and paper
1:08:18level
1:08:20unlike the stock market which is really
1:08:22easy to get data on
1:08:24but which has no principles at all we're
1:08:26very close to
1:08:27so nothing like a theory so in the
1:08:30domain of simple problems
1:08:33you can say that there is just
1:08:38observation
1:08:39which is just facts that we think we can
1:08:41get definite on
1:08:43then there's what's called phenomenology
1:08:46which is things like
1:08:48um carno's understanding of heat engines
1:08:50or
1:08:51the original um
1:08:56faraday trying to understand
1:08:58electromagnetism and recognizing that
1:09:00their connections
1:09:02between charges and electricity
1:09:05or between currents and magnetism things
1:09:07like that coulomb
1:09:08ohm those all live in the domain that
1:09:11physics calls phenomenology
1:09:13where you start to recognize that there
1:09:15are regular patterns you can quantify
1:09:17them
1:09:18but there's not a sense that you have
1:09:19kind of a unified theory of cause
1:09:21is that what we call laws in ohm's law
1:09:25[Music]
1:09:27the word law used to be used for those
1:09:30yes
1:09:30you're exactly right coulomb's law ohm's
1:09:33law
1:09:34faraday's law and so forth and so
1:09:39yeah so law is yet another word that
1:09:41comes in and makes things complicated
1:09:44in the phenomenologist's domain laws are
1:09:47these kind of reliable regularities
1:09:50that you're sure you can trust and you
1:09:51can quantify even if you're not sure you
1:09:53know cause behind them
1:09:56then you go one level beyond that
1:09:59and that's where the word theory starts
1:10:01to come in in physics
1:10:03so you have things like newton's theory
1:10:05of gravity where you can take
1:10:07all of kepler's and copernicus's
1:10:08phenomenology
1:10:10and you can say i can write down an f
1:10:12equals m a and a form
1:10:13f equals g and m over r squared
1:10:16and i can recover all that phenomenology
1:10:19by a process of construction from a
1:10:22simpler thing
1:10:23we call it a law again but newton's law
1:10:27is not a law in the same sense
1:10:29as kepler's laws were kepler's were
1:10:31phenomenological laws
1:10:33newtons are theoretical laws maxwell can
1:10:36take
1:10:36faraday and
1:10:40not i i guess coulomb not ohm because
1:10:45and he can put together a law that
1:10:47unifies electromagnetism
1:10:49and now you have maxwell's equations
1:10:50which are a law for electromagnetism
1:10:54and more than that they are a theory
1:10:58of electromagnetism where maxwell says i
1:11:01need to introduce
1:11:02this quantity called a field and
1:11:04stipulate that the field relates to
1:11:06charges in a certain way
1:11:08and that the field has dynamics that
1:11:10obey a set of equations
1:11:12so you're starting to introduce new
1:11:13objects into the discourse
1:11:15which are not just the objects of
1:11:17phenomenology
1:11:19and you're committing to mathematical
1:11:21relations quantifiable relations among
1:11:23the objects
1:11:24so that structure that you build up
1:11:27is what physics uses the word theory for
1:11:32and then einstein comes and says i need
1:11:34to do the same thing for gravitation
1:11:36i need to make geometry dynamic and i
1:11:38need to introduce fields that
1:11:40characterize
1:11:41the geometry and the satisfying equation
1:11:43of motion the same way maxwell's fields
1:11:45did
1:11:46for electromagnetism and einstein was
1:11:48entirely basing
1:11:50his view of general relativity
1:11:54on what maxwell had shown to be possible
1:11:56for
1:11:57electromagnetism so in physics the
1:12:00technical sense of theory
1:12:04is this sense of building a vocabulary
1:12:07where every term in the vocabulary
1:12:10refers to something you can completely
1:12:13operationalize
1:12:15in terms of how you do an experiment
1:12:16what you measure how you interpret the
1:12:18measurement
1:12:19and then how you use it to check a
1:12:21calculation as being either true or
1:12:23false
1:12:24it's that whole big structure and in a
1:12:28proper physics
1:12:29theory none of the terms do not have an
1:12:33operationalization in that sense
1:12:36so whereas theory had this flavor of
1:12:39tentativeness in its old common language
1:12:41use
1:12:42in physics by the time you get to a
1:12:44theory that is
1:12:45as reliable a piece of knowledge as
1:12:48anything that exists
1:12:49in the world it may not be the most
1:12:52familiar quantum states and quantum
1:12:54measurement and decoherence are not
1:12:56familiar for us but
1:13:00what the terms mean operationally a
1:13:03state vector
1:13:04an observable a decoherence event
1:13:08and how the mathematical relations that
1:13:11we're committing to as our understanding
1:13:13of nature
1:13:14those have no violations ever so there's
1:13:18nothing in human experience that is more
1:13:20reliable than these
1:13:23the best anything can ever achieve is to
1:13:25never have been wrong
1:13:26even once so it's kind of the limit of
1:13:29the best we know how to do so that makes
1:13:33conversation really challenging right
1:13:35because you have this one word
1:13:37that means things that are vastly
1:13:39separate in human experience depending
1:13:40on the context where it's being used
1:13:43and there are many other sciences
1:13:46where there is nothing that yet has the
1:13:50status
1:13:51of a theory in that sense
1:13:55and sometimes they only have the status
1:13:57of a theory in
1:13:58or a law in the phenomenological sense
1:14:02it is okay to say that
1:14:06evolution has the status of ethereum
1:14:08biology
1:14:12but
1:14:16to me it's you know if you were to walk
1:14:19up to me on the street
1:14:20and say i want to build a bridge can you
1:14:22tell me how
1:14:23and i said ah yes use mathematics
1:14:27you would not be impressed you'd say
1:14:29yeah of course if i had asked you about
1:14:31building a bridge or
1:14:32you know calculating a mortgage
1:14:34amortization
1:14:36or epidemiology the answer would always
1:14:38have been
1:14:39use mathematics i want to build a bridge
1:14:41can you tell me something
1:14:42particular so to say
1:14:45that the biosphere evolves under
1:14:47darwinian evolution
1:14:48is a little bit like answering the
1:14:50question about the bridge by saying use
1:14:52mathematics
1:14:53yes of course it applies to vastly many
1:14:55things
1:14:56but precisely because it's so general
1:15:00it's not doing the hard work of telling
1:15:02you how to answer
1:15:03most particular questions
1:15:07so yes it's a theory but it's a theory
1:15:09whose generality
1:15:13limits how much you're telling anyone
1:15:15when you say it
1:15:18it's a high level it's that the theories
1:15:21level is high as opposed to physics
1:15:23theories that are
1:15:24low level level of atoms
1:15:27or there is a gap so there is a
1:15:31so from evolution so in physics you know
1:15:34you got the
1:15:35quantum theories but from quantum you
1:15:37can't get to evolution evolution doesn't
1:15:39tell you anything about the quantum
1:15:41or or gravitational or the magnetic
1:15:44fields
1:15:45yeah i think i put it i think i would
1:15:48make the following analogy
1:15:50in mathematics we have something called
1:15:51the law of large numbers
1:15:54which says that for certain ways of
1:15:56taking samples with lots of entries and
1:15:58then aggregating them
1:16:00the aggregate value will tend to have
1:16:02certain stability properties that the
1:16:04individual things do not
1:16:06and the law of large numbers is
1:16:07incredibly important
1:16:09you can apply it to gambling but you can
1:16:11also apply it to thermodynamics and you
1:16:13can apply it to quantum field theory
1:16:16so the law of large numbers is not
1:16:19exactly a theory of any particular thing
1:16:22in physics but it's this incredibly
1:16:25general
1:16:26role that combinatorics plays in the
1:16:28theories of a lot of different things
1:16:30and without the law of large numbers you
1:16:32would not have quantum field theory
1:16:34because you have to have that to have
1:16:36renormalization
1:16:37and without renormalization you don't
1:16:39understand why any theory is stable
1:16:41of anything so i feel like
1:16:44darwin's natural selection is a kind of
1:16:47a minimally
1:16:48structured law it's a bit more
1:16:50structured than the law of large numbers
1:16:51it's a bit more particular
1:16:53because it assumes individuals and
1:16:54populations and generational structure
1:16:58but it's also extremely general in that
1:17:01it's not committing to what the
1:17:02individuals are or how the populations
1:17:04work or what the generation structure is
1:17:07so it's playing a role in biology a
1:17:09little bit like the mathematical role
1:17:11that the law of large numbers plays in
1:17:13many branches of physics and many other
1:17:15things too
1:17:20well now we know how
1:17:23theories work um so
1:17:27we have life now how much to can we make
1:17:30life in a lab no no
1:17:34we can't
1:17:37any form of life it depends on what you
1:17:40mean make
1:17:41right some viruses i've had you you
1:17:44could
1:17:45build in a lab simple viruses
1:17:48you can take a genome sequence and then
1:17:51you have enough molecular machinery that
1:17:53you can copy that genome sequence
1:17:55right you can you can take all of the
1:17:58genes out of
1:17:59you can sequence them in one organism
1:18:01you can build the genes
1:18:03in a cell-free system with molecules you
1:18:06can take that chromosome and you can put
1:18:08it in a cell
1:18:09and then the cell will live so craig
1:18:11venter's lab did this hamilton smith was
1:18:13the
1:18:14leader of a project like that
1:18:17um in what sense have you made something
1:18:22you have shown that the molecular
1:18:24components that you have are sufficient
1:18:26to do all the work
1:18:28so you've shown that there's not
1:18:29something missing in the cell that you
1:18:31didn't discover that was doing part of
1:18:33the work
1:18:35you haven't of course assembled a whole
1:18:37cell you took a complete cell
1:18:39then you took a genome and put in it
1:18:42eventually we'll be able to take
1:18:43membranes and proteins and components
1:18:45and genomes
1:18:46and as we get technically more
1:18:48sophisticated we'll be able to put all
1:18:50the components of the cell together
1:18:52and say there it's a cell but in what
1:18:55sense have you made anything you haven't
1:18:57had to understand anything
1:19:00causally to do that you've had to
1:19:02isolate a bunch of components and become
1:19:04able to build them
1:19:05and then be able to assemble them
1:19:09but you haven't answered any why
1:19:10questions you have answered only how
1:19:12questions and what questions
1:19:17so if i think about what it means to
1:19:20have understood the origin
1:19:22of life and shown that you understand it
1:19:23by making things
1:19:25i think you have to answer what how and
1:19:27why questions all
1:19:29three and the fact
1:19:32that so how to say
1:19:36when people criticize education
1:19:39and this is like a teeny teeny tiny
1:19:41version
1:19:42of the thing that science makes a huge
1:19:45version of
1:19:46when people criticize education they say
1:19:48don't just do rote memorization ask your
1:19:50students to think ask them to solve
1:19:52problems because they say
1:19:54even if you skip some of the
1:19:56memorization if your students learn to
1:19:58think they can go back and fill that in
1:19:59and it's a good use of time
1:20:01whereas you can have students who are
1:20:03great at memorizing things
1:20:04but then if you ask them to solve a new
1:20:06problem they have no skills at all
1:20:07they're still children
1:20:09and in general within education we think
1:20:11some version of that argument is roughly
1:20:13right
1:20:14you need to memorize a certain amount
1:20:15but you shouldn't only memorize you also
1:20:17need thinking skills
1:20:19well apply that to our biochemistry
1:20:21problem
1:20:23if all you're doing is making an exact
1:20:25copy of an exact genome of an exact cell
1:20:28and putting it in another cell it seems
1:20:31to me like you're doing an extreme
1:20:33version of the memorization
1:20:35you're not thinking
1:20:38whereas i think what we all would love
1:20:41and you know
1:20:42i don't mean this as a criticism of any
1:20:44of this work
1:20:45as molecular engineering it's a tour de
1:20:48force
1:20:48and the people doing it are giants
1:20:52but any any person with a reasonable
1:20:55level of humility
1:20:58will also say that if we talk about
1:21:00understanding the origin of life and
1:21:02making
1:21:03life we want the thing that's analogous
1:21:06to that thinking
1:21:06problem-solving part not just memorizing
1:21:09and copying
1:21:12and that we're not anywhere close to to
1:21:15doing
1:21:17and it's incredible how much people know
1:21:20it's so much more than nothing but if we
1:21:23did an
1:21:23honest account of how many other things
1:21:26are also true of life where we have
1:21:28no good ideas at all i bet
1:21:31you would find that by a factor of fifty
1:21:33to one or a hundred to one
1:21:35the things we don't have any good ideas
1:21:38about at all
1:21:38outnumber the things where we do have
1:21:40plausible ideas
1:21:42so there's just a huge amount of work
1:21:44and imagination that still needs to be
1:21:46provided
1:21:47to get there and do you think
1:21:50advancements
1:21:52in understanding the dna could
1:21:54potentially
1:21:56help us with the origin of life or
1:22:00or not for bits and pieces
1:22:04um you know an area where i'm a huge fan
1:22:07right now
1:22:08is work on the history of the ribosome
1:22:10and very early proteins
1:22:13so that's an area where we have history
1:22:16that goes back from
1:22:17before the origin of translation and
1:22:20that history is locked in and we can
1:22:21reconstruct it
1:22:23we have no understanding what the
1:22:25evolutionary dynamics look like
1:22:27in that early era because all the
1:22:29evolutionary dynamics we understand
1:22:32depends entirely on translation to even
1:22:34exist
1:22:36so what process was it that was laying
1:22:38down layers of structure
1:22:40in an era before translation exists
1:22:44because the structure it was laying down
1:22:46is the machinery that does
1:22:48translation so that's an area where i
1:22:51think we have a data gold mine
1:22:54and we have no compelling ideas at all
1:22:57and that's a great area to work because
1:23:00where you have no data
1:23:01then you're looking for the data and
1:23:03you're looking for ideas
1:23:05so you're lost in both directions but if
1:23:08you have an area where you have really
1:23:09rich data and no
1:23:10ideas then at least you know what the
1:23:13answer to the test question is you just
1:23:14don't know what the test question was
1:23:19and there are lots of areas like that
1:23:21that can be done mineralogy carbon in
1:23:22the deep earth
1:23:24and so people are doing good work in all
1:23:26these areas i still think computational
1:23:28chemistry
1:23:29is an incredibly fertile area because
1:23:32it's now strong enough to begin to do
1:23:34something but it's really powerful
1:23:36generation is still in front of us
1:23:41what is your what is one discovery
1:23:44you're most looking forward to
1:23:45elsewhere is it
1:23:50understanding why the genetic code has
1:23:52the form it does
1:23:54and how that connects to
1:23:57the earliest proteins and the earliest
1:24:00rnas
1:24:01i think that's a solvable problem and i
1:24:03might live long enough to see a good
1:24:04solution to it come
1:24:06into existence
1:24:10also um enough of the geochemistry may
1:24:13be solved
1:24:16that we start to attach numbers to
1:24:18whether or not
1:24:19the citric acid cycle could ever have
1:24:21been self-amplifying in geochemistry
1:24:24whether it's unique or not that problem
1:24:27was stalled for a long time but there
1:24:28are now
1:24:29several labs doing really terrific work
1:24:31on that
1:24:33not clear whether they see enough
1:24:35questions and are doing enough
1:24:37to really provide an answer but at least
1:24:39it's moving again
1:24:41and the stuff they're discovering is
1:24:44deeply satisfying and very beautiful so
1:24:47it's much better than nothing
1:24:49um that was where all my time was going
1:24:52for
1:24:5320 years and i i've gone into these
1:24:56other areas because i had no real good
1:24:57ideas to contribute
1:24:59in other areas so i'm i have to rely on
1:25:01them and stay connected to their work
1:25:03and hope that maybe it triggers an idea
1:25:05somewhere down the line
1:25:07final question have you ever had a
1:25:10eureka moment
1:25:14in little teeny tiny areas yeah right
1:25:18would you like to share with us any of
1:25:20any
1:25:22oh it's completely trivial stuff right
1:25:24right realizing that i know how to
1:25:25calculate the solution to the
1:25:27determinant of a certain matrix
1:25:29okay yeah silly little stuff you know
1:25:32the kind of stuff that students would
1:25:33normally be doing
1:25:35um but here's a thing that is fun
1:25:41if you have time and nothing to do which
1:25:44of course we all have tons of
1:25:46there's a wonderful book by alexander
1:25:48luria from the 1960s called the mind of
1:25:51a minimalist
1:25:54and it has to do with synesthesia autism
1:25:57and its role in memory
1:26:03and i don't know how many people are
1:26:06like me in this i am not
1:26:08a synesthesic person person in
1:26:12letters and colors and
1:26:16sounds for me are still separate
1:26:17modalities most of the time
1:26:20but when your mind is in its really
1:26:22relaxed form the form where ideas come
1:26:24in
1:26:26it often tends to be much more
1:26:27synesthetic or synesthesia whatever the
1:26:29correct
1:26:30usage is and so when i get one of these
1:26:33ideas if i happen to be out on a morning
1:26:35run
1:26:36and the moment when it occurs to me i
1:26:38know how to solve the determinant
1:26:40is also a moment when i happen to be
1:26:42jumping over a small ditch and being
1:26:43careful not to twist my ankle
1:26:46that whole moment will remain available
1:26:48attached to that determinant forever
1:26:51so the whole mind is there at the same
1:26:53time and
1:26:55the smell of the grass and the shape of
1:26:57the ditch and the feeling of the motion
1:26:59and the solution of the determinant are
1:27:02part of one state of mind and ceilard
1:27:04talks about this when he talks about
1:27:06seeing
1:27:07the chain reaction and stepping off a
1:27:09bus
1:27:10so i know other people have this
1:27:12experience and i suspect it's probably
1:27:14pretty common
1:27:17but i find that interesting i in terms
1:27:19of using the mind and how best to relax
1:27:22the mind
1:27:23and make it able to do its best work in
1:27:26seeing new things
1:27:28i like the thought of being
1:27:29methodological and looking for that
1:27:31relaxed
1:27:32state in a better way sort of knowing
1:27:34what it how it works and what it feels
1:27:36like and we have access to that
1:27:37both from our own experiences and from
1:27:39things other people write
1:27:41do you meditate by any chance probably
1:27:45not
1:27:46right um but
1:27:50that has become such a trendy thing
1:27:53that i don't want to claim any knowledge
1:27:57or participation in it
1:27:59because i know people who are serious
1:28:01about it and know a lot and have
1:28:02committed themselves over the course of
1:28:04a lifetime
1:28:05and i don't want to be disrespectful to
1:28:07those people's knowledge by imagining
1:28:08that i know anything about it when i
1:28:10haven't put in the work i see
1:28:15and it's a it's a natural question to
1:28:17ask and i wonder the same kind of stuff
1:28:20yeah i i'm also curious to get your
1:28:22thoughts on free will
1:28:26since it's a term that needs to mean
1:28:29something
1:28:29first hmm well
1:28:32i well my
1:28:36well free will yeah that's a good
1:28:39question defining what
1:28:41what we mean by free will yeah
1:28:44yeah that i think
1:28:47most people's perception of free will is
1:28:50wrong
1:28:50because you're still you're just
1:28:52following laws of nature
1:28:54but but you have degrees of freedom
1:28:57within that
1:29:00so yeah but what's the question right
1:29:03yeah yeah again yeah
1:29:04you're looking for exactly defined term
1:29:06you know i don't have it
1:29:09well i think what i'm looking for is
1:29:11good categories
1:29:13so if you live in the
1:29:17in the ancient world where you like to
1:29:20ask the question are viruses alive or
1:29:22not
1:29:24the fact that you can endlessly go in
1:29:25circles chasing your tail on that
1:29:28is a signal that you probably are not
1:29:29using good categories
1:29:32but that doesn't mean you know what
1:29:33categories to replace them with that are
1:29:35better
1:29:37and of course in spite of the fact that
1:29:38i have made this heroic claim
1:29:41that it's a category error to ask
1:29:42whether things are alive and you should
1:29:44look for life as a phase transition
1:29:46you know how many people actually are
1:29:47using that terminology
1:29:51at most one which is me um
1:29:54maybe occasionally someone else in a
1:29:56slip but most people are perfectly happy
1:29:58to continue asking whether viruses are
1:30:00alive and they don't care that i think
1:30:01they should be asked in a different way
1:30:04so i think that the tangles they get
1:30:07themselves in
1:30:08show the category error i think there
1:30:10are better categories available
1:30:12and the fact that i think that has had
1:30:15no consequence in the world at all
1:30:18similarly for free will i think the fact
1:30:20that it's such a tangled mess
1:30:24is an indication that the language
1:30:26doesn't it's not capable of carrying
1:30:27much weight it's an impressionistic
1:30:29poetic language that doesn't have
1:30:30categories at all
1:30:32and so we are looking for better
1:30:34categories
1:30:35where will they come from
1:30:39i have opinions on that but i don't
1:30:42think there's
1:30:43any nice clean approach to it that is
1:30:46that carries as much weight as i think
1:30:49the face transition language will carry
1:30:50for the nature of the living state
1:30:53it's a harder problem and on that note
1:30:57we'll we'll end the interview thank you
1:30:59very
1:31:01what much pleasure what fun talking to
1:31:03you great

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