The rainbow and the worm: Establishing a new physics of life

Abstract

What is life? Many have asked this question, and no definitive answer is yet widely accepted. Is life something truly distinct from non-living stuff, as many dualists have suggested for millennia? Is there an élan vital that distinguishes living from dead stuff? Or is life about certain types of organization, metabolism, reproduction, goal-oriented behavior? None of these answers have yet won the debate.

There is, however, an intriguing new set of ideas that have been developed by Mae-Wan Ho, a biophysicist and science activist (as she calls herself) based in London. Ho’s basic assertion is that life exists on a spectrum and is at its root organized, quantum coherent energy. Ho’s work attempts to bridge the gap between physics and biology by recognizing that there is no real gap at all—just a gap in current methods and habits of thinking.