The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundations of Life

Lowenstein WR. 366 pages. New York: Oxford Univ Pr; 1999. $30.00. ISBN 0195118286. Order phone 800-451-7556. Field of medicine: Philosophy of science, cell biology, and biochemistry. Format: Hardcover book. Audience: Readers with a general background in science who are interested in the foundations of biology. Purpose: To propound a general theory of biology that explains the highly ordered nature of living organisms in terms of information science. Content: The scope of this book is broad. It starts with a discussion of information in the first chapter, moves through the origin of the universe and the evolution of the forces of nature, then focuses on the flow of biological information through macromolecular interactions and intercellular and intracellular communication networks. The penultimate chapter contains discussions of consciousness and quantum computations, and the final chapter concludes with a consideration of the limits of scientific knowledge. Highlights: The thematic highlight of this book is the author's attempt at consilience of the natural sciences based on the theory that biomolecular systems tend to minimize information expenditure and evolve along paths maximizing information efficiency. The understanding that information is a physical quantity and a fundamental property of the universe is a major accomplishment in intellectual history. The textual highlights are Lowenstein's recollections of circumstances of his own seminal discoveries in cell biology, particularly in the field of cell-cell interactions. Limitations: The book suffers from an almost unbearable use of metaphor and precious phrases. We might be able to tolerate this stylistic peculiarity if it were not embedded in a poor overall organization of ideas. One chapter veers from the composition of the cell membranea promising beginning given the subtitle of the bookto hormones, a long discussion of communication channels with references to thermodynamics and the Second Law, Claude Shannon's theorem on noisy channels and information transfer, and, for good measure, John von Neumann and game theory. Most of the references are to works published more than a decade ago. The book's illustrations do not include any high-resolution structures, which could have been used effectively in making some of the author's points. Related reading: We now have a plethora of books and articles on science for the educated reader, some outstanding, that address many of the ideas covered in this book. Examples are Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Random House, 1998); Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality (Penguin Books, 1997); Davies' The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon & Schuster, 1992); The Fundamental Physical Limits of Computation, by Bennett and Landauer (Scientific American. 1985;253:48-56); Feynman Lectures on Computation, edited by Hey and Allen (Addison-Wesley, 1996); and Lewin's Genes VI (Oxford Univ Pr, 1997). Reviewer: Harvey Rubin, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.