The Network of Life – A New View of Evolution

This is an important book outlining a new narrative of evolution as a network characterised by horizontal evolution disclosing life as fundamentally interconnected in webs and patterns of relationship. The author explains the main drivers of horizontal evolution as breeding and genetic recombination, the merger of species, horizontal gene transfer, and co-evolution – all of which supports a new symbiotic theory of health and our interconnected relationships in our shared environment. As the author points out, ‘narratives and their metaphors provide mental coordinates for mapping observations and ideas’ – and science is still dominated by limiting and outdated mechanistic metaphors. He provides an excellent chart with simple definitions of terms, and many other helpful diagrams illustrating the characteristics of his new way of thinking.

Overall, this new approach is decentralised and dynamic, with an emphasis on biodiversity in relation to human and environmental health. His sources are all mainstream, with no mention of Goethe, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Brian Goodwin and Mae-Wan Ho, whose work contains important qualitative insights. These thinkers would share the author’s view of life as process and system. The chapter contrasting the germ theory of disease with the symbiotic theory of health could have benefited from Sir Albert Howard’s work on the indivisibility of soil and human health, though the author’s coverage of the Microbiome is excellent.

The last two chapters address life’s outlook and future humans. The author discusses many scientific innovations, and while he cautions that we should consider their ethical implications, his coverage of the downsides is relatively sparse – including the mRNA platform and his advocacy of the possibility of the zoonotic origin of SARS-Cov2 when we know a great deal more about its development within gain of function research and bioweapons programmes – see my review of The Wuhan Cover-Up from April this year and the recent 520-page congressional report. He sees humans and technology as evolving culturally together, discussing the impact on our bodies, brains, minds, and culture. His view of the human is mainly in terms of form and function, without any reference to our inner life, although it is undoubtedly true that we shape technology and our technology shapes our culture and minds. A case in point is gene therapy, and here we must be wary of the limitations of reductionist thinking in relation to the dynamics of complex systems and our potentially hubristic precision vocabulary of engineering and editing – my own view is that science needs to be informed by a radically new way of thinking based on intrinsic rather than instrumental value; in this respect, the book does not go far enough – see my review of Vandana Shiva in the main review section.