A Life Study

Is human perception of the vibrant, living world around us the definitive window on objective reality that we imagine it to be? What about the myriad exchanges that lie beyond the limits of our abilities to see, hear, and feel them? What forces underlie the miracles of a flower-pollinating bee or a stirring musical symphony? This book charts an exercise in reframing the understanding of life as a multidimensional web of dynamic, perpetual exchanges. Drawing on examples from the subatomic scale to the astronomical, from the objectivity of mathematical and scientific analyses to a highly personal search for coherent humanist meaning, the author makes an overwhelmingly convincing case for how the simplest exchanges ultimately lead to the emergence of novelty and the complex beauty of precious life in all its forms. In accessible prose, this wide-ranging celebration of life probes the mystery of how we got here. It acknowledges the limits of scientific methodology in furthering our understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and reminds us that we are all part of something bigger that will continue to evolve after we have returned to dust. Francis Waldvogel is a retired professor of medicine. An influential figure in the Swiss academic system, he directed the department of internal medicine at the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève and served as president of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology ETHZ (Zurich) and EPFL (Lausanne) and vice president of the Swiss Science and Technology Council. After mandatory retirement from public positions in 2004 he cofounded the World Knowledge Dialogue, an international conference platform to promote dialogue across academic disciplines rooted in the so-called hard and soft sciences. More recently he has presided the Novartis Venture Fund and been active in the development of numerous humanitarian, social, and financing initiatives. An earlier version of this material was released in French by Éditions Odile Jacob in 2020 under the title Tableau de la vie. The subject matter has been substantially revised and translated into English as a collaboration between the author and his colleague Moira Cockell, a retired molecular biologist.