All systems Tao: Holistic view of life’s networks

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Causality works bottom-up and top-down at once (Image: David Maitland/Millennium Images)

Fritjof Capra goes beyond The Tao of Physics with The Systems View of Life, a much-needed vision of biology with a dash of Eastern mysticism

WHEN I was about 17, I was briefly transfixed by the teachings of Eastern mysticism. I read everything I could about Zen Buddhism and Taoism, and pored over books by spiritual figures who claimed that ordinary consciousness could be transcended through discipline and meditation. I had tantalising visions of suddenly achieving "enlightenment" or "oneness" with the Godhead (although I had no idea what that was). To me, it all sounded impossibly cool.

As I also loved mathematics and physics, I picked up the bestselling bookThe Tao of Physics by physicist Fritjof Capra. It introduced me to weird concepts from quantum theory: things like entanglement and non-locality, which Einstein famously called "spooky action at a distance".

Capra convinced me there were surprising parallels between these aspects of modern physics and Eastern mysticism, that what Buddhists had been saying for centuries about the interconnectedness of everything in the universe sat quite well with today's physics. His wonderful book kindled a fascination with quantum theory which I have never lost (although I gave up on mystic enlightenment long ago).

I think Capra is now ready to inspire a new generation of young readers in much the same way, only with a focus on systems biology rather than quantum physics.

In The Systems View of Life, Capra and biochemist Pier Luigi Luisi explore how modern biology, in trying to understand the self-organising, adaptive and creative aspects of life in all its forms, has by necessity turned to a holistic, systems view emphasising pattern and organisation.

But the main point of the book isn't merely that systems biology is fascinating. More importantly, Capra and Luisi argue that many of the most important problems we face today from financial instability to climate change and ecological degradation reflect our collective inability to appreciate just how the world operates as a holistic, networked system in which every part depends on every other.

There may be solutions even simple ones, they suggest if we could manage to start thinking in this way, and the book is their effort to help this along. It's partly an enjoyable survey of exciting new developments in systems biology, valuable to any student of biology or science, and partly a bold blueprint for how we might preserve our future on Earth using the systems perspective on life and what sustains it.

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All systems Tao: Holistic view of life's networks